


Level Up

by saisei



Category: Final Fantasy XV
Genre: Brotherhood: Final Fantasy XV, Developing Friendships, Friends to Lovers, High School, M/M, Pre-Canon, Slice of Life
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-20
Updated: 2019-11-20
Packaged: 2021-02-08 03:48:40
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 45,546
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21469579
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/saisei/pseuds/saisei
Summary: In high school, Prompto saw his life as a game where he was the hero, sent on a quest by Lady Lunafreya herself. But while Noct and Gladio joined his party easily, he had to really work to get to know Ignis and become friends... or perhaps more. [written for Promnis Big Bang 2019]
Relationships: Prompto Argentum/Ignis Scientia
Comments: 62
Kudos: 201
Collections: 2019 Promnis Big Bang





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This fic wouldn't exist without the patience and support of the Ignis Whump server (despite it not being a whump fic), without whom I would have given up way back in July. Special thanks to my beta readers, crabapplered and lagerstatte, and to my lovely artist, Lir, whose artwork can be found embedded in the fic and also at https://twitter.com/princetlir/status/1197207270225891328. Thanks as well to my mod, nightwing, to whom I consistently promised it would be done in another 5000 words tops. I may have underestimated myself there. And thanks to the Promnis Official server for organizing and running the Promnis Big Bang 2019 <3 <3

Prompto always assumed that if his life was a game, it'd be one of those cute ones about living on a farm or raising kittens or collecting gemstones, the kind people played on their phones to kill time. He was cool with that, although he'd rather raise puppies. He'd only taken care of Chibi for a few days, but after she was gone his house felt extra-empty.

But then Lady Lunafreya contacted him and told him she wanted him to befriend Prince Noctis. He started a training program to level up his life, and worked his ass off to get into the same national school Noctis was applying to, despite his parents' disappointment at how bourgeois that was. He swallowed down his nerves and introduced himself to Noct, and suddenly he realized he'd been in an RPG all along. _Prince Noctis has joined your party._

He freaked out about this for a couple of weeks in which he and Noct ate lunch together and worked on homework in the library while complaining about their hideous green sports uniforms, but eventually it because just background static. He worried about a lot of things, and eventually the fear that someday he'd be booted from the tutorials and be chosen to head off into the open world on a mission to save the kingdom was supplanted by actual problems. Homework. Whether his parents would remember to send him the month's money on time. If anyone he found attractive would ever look twice at him.

One day he followed Noct out the school gates like usual, because hanging out with royalty was his new normal now. He was arguing about something stupid that Noct was trying to hipcheck him for, when Noct stopped abruptly and said, "Hey, do you want a ride home?"

Noct got picked up every day by a car with government plates (it was probably bulletproof as well; the doors looked weighty). Prompto hadn't asked about the car or the fact that Noct couldn't walk around after school like all the other students, given how cagey Noct was about being the prince. He wasn't, Prompto thought, embarrassed by being who he was, but he knew most people didn't get that it was complicated.

Prompto was a war orphan, and had spent all fifteen years of his life being told by strangers how lucky he was to be adopted and brought to live in Insomnia, land of plenty with cable TV. Which was true (except his parents didn't pay for cable), but not the whole picture, not by a long shot. So he sympathized with Noct not wanting to have to deal with wrong assumptions and off-hand comments that were painfully thoughtless; and he recognized that he was probably in no position to know everything that did bug Noct, so he tried to hang back and follow Noct's lead.

So far, he'd learned a lot about video games and fishing. And video games about fishing, which Noct kept trying to install on Prompto's phone, saying they were fun. (As if.)

But now Noct was waving at the driver of the car, who opened the door and stepped out, looking more like someone dressed up as a movie character than a regular person as he walked over. He was taller than Noct and wore what had to be a uniform: immaculate black trousers, white button-down shirt, a gray vest, and driving gloves. Chauffeur, Prompto guessed, though he looked way too young to be a professional driver. But he also didn't look old enough to be a bodyguard. He had long bangs that hung into his glasses, and green eyes that stared back at Prompto in a calculating way.

"Prompto," Noct said, with a wave between them,"this is Ignis."

Ignis frowned, very slightly, as if he suspected Noct was being purposefully rude and thought he ought to do something about that. Prompto suspected Noct knew very well what was expected of him and had deliberately chosen to flout etiquette as some kind of test. Which Prompto was probably going to fail, but... whatever.

"Prompto Argentum," he said, and stuck out his hand. "I'm in Noct's class."

Ignis had a very professional handshake, and Prompto didn't miss how Noct's eyes narrowed, like he anticipated Ignis' introduction would be somehow offensive. But Ignis just said that it was a pleasure to meet him, and that he was a third-year student at Eastharbor when he wasn't serving the Crown.

That was the private school King Regis had attended, and the administration were probably sad Noct hadn't followed in his footsteps. Most of their students were nobility or came from very old money. The kind of kids whose families had probably owned villas in Altissia before war made travel abroad and recreational yachting impossible.

Prompto had never met much less spoken to an Eastharbor student, but he told himself if he wasn't intimidated by Noct, then he'd be fine. "Cool." His palms started to sweat, and he congratulated himself on getting the handshake over with before that happened. Wouldn't want to ruin Ignis' gloves. "So..." By putting the pieces together, he could figure out that Ignis was probably the son of someone very high-ranking, who was on track to join the Crownsguard (not the Glaive, that was for commoners and immigrants like Prompto). But he must have had enough actual talent that he was given a real job, instead of being shuffled off into the nepotism-track of well paid cushy internships for the incompetent. (Something Prompto's mom got really angry about a lot.) All that Prompto had in common with him was that they were both students. "Aren't you young to be driving?"

He felt his cheeks burn immediately; way to question Ignis when clearly the King himself approved of his skills.

"I obtained my license two years ago," Ignis said, adjusting his glasses. Prompto was grateful that he was sticking to facts, though undoubtedly he'd be scathing once Prompto was out of earshot.

But Noct gave Prompto a sly grin, like the conversation had taken a turn he liked. "Same age as us," he pointed out. "So I'm angling for lessons this summer. Fair is fair. You want in?"

Ignis' pained wince was masterfully repressed. He was too polite, apparently, to argue in front of a stranger, but Prompto suspected Noct had been bringing this up for a while.

"Dude, I couldn't afford lessons, much less a car." Prompto shrugged. "Plus my parents are religious about public transport, they'd disown me."

Noct had opened his mouth to argue – possibly even to offer waive fees or whatever via royal handwave – but then closed it again and looked thoughtful. Noct was just enough aware of the differences between himself and regular people that he found them compelling, and Prompto had discovered early on that Noct considered the details of his common-as-dirt life _fascinating_, for some reason. Things that Prompto did that Noct probably left to servants, like doing the laundry or cooking, or even taking the subway to school. Noct had never been on the subway. He'd been curious about Prompto's transit card, and a bit wistful.

"I told Prompto we would drive him home," Noct said, looking up at Ignis with a slight shift to his posture that made the comment come off as... not a request, more like an order.

He could tell that Ignis heard it as well, his expression blanking to a polite mask. "Very well."

Which meant he was put out and probably inconvenienced, but knew this wasn't a battle he wanted to fight. Even though Prompto had just met the guy, he felt sorry for him.

"I've got errands to run on the way home," he improvised, trying to strike a balance between not offending Noct by rejecting his generosity but not making Ignis hate him. "But it'd be awesome if you could drop me at the station."

"Certainly." Ignis nodded. "Which one?"

Well, if he put it _that_ way... Prompto could cut his commute by fifteen minutes and avoid a transfer at Newbridge if they went a bit further east, to the Blue line. "Stonecutters?"

Ignis nodded, and gestured toward the car.

The seats were the softest leather Prompto could have imagined, and Noct didn't seem impressed by that or any of the car's other luxury features. Prompto figured that was what happened when you were so rich a wood-paneled dashboard was just the done thing. Instead, once the car was on the road, Noct gave Prompto a sly glance and then yanked a school bag out of nowhere, the air shimmering with crystal sparkles for a moment, and smelling fresh and clean, like after a hard rain.

"Don't you _dare_," Ignis said from the front seat, even though he didn't sound angry – more exasperated and resigned. Prompto saw him glance in the rearview mirror and sigh. But Noct wasn't paying any attention as he unzipped the bag and pulled out textbooks that he flipped through desultorily before setting them aside. "Return everything immediately, please."

"I know," Noct said. He opened a notebook full of meticulously aligned equations and squinted at it. "Do you really get this stuff, or are you just faking it?"

Ignis huffed. "How exactly does one fake an understanding of mathematics?"

"There's got to be a way," Noct argued back, setting the notebook down and pulling out another.

Prompto listened to their teasing back-and-forth, revising his opinion of who Ignis was as Ignis relaxed and started trading insults and terrible puns. He used the King's magic for mundane things like carrying his school stuff, and Noct was comfortable with him, not like someone who was being nice to a servant (or so Prompto assumed; his entire prior knowledge of aristocracy came from TV dramas). Plus, Ignis wasn't intimidated by Noct at all. He could give as good as he got.

Prompto felt a momentary pang of jealousy that he wasn't Noct's only friend, sulked for a good twenty seconds, and then started wondering if he could make Ignis _his_ friend, too. Ignis seemed pretty cool so far, what with the driving and the magic and the general aura of easy competence he projected.

"Look at this," Noct said, nudging Prompto's arm. He held out Ignis' school ID, cupped in his hand as if that would keep Ignis from noticing. "It's worse than mine, even."

Prompto repressed a snort. The two pictures were polar opposites. Noct's official photo had bedhead and a baleful glare, whereas Ignis had obviously tried to give a good impression, only to meet with defeat. His hair was flattened with product and he squinted at the camera with his glasses off. The harsh light from the flash had not been kind to an outbreak of acne across his cheeks, and his school uniform jacket was a sickly green and orange plaid. The necktie was purple and knotted perfectly, as if that would stop anyone from noticing how badly the whole outfit clashed.

When Prompto became a professional photographer, he'd take really good school pictures, so no one would ever have to suffer though a year of looking like that. "Yours is the still worst, though," Prompto said. "I offered you a comb, and you said no cause your hair was hot like Ifirt." He stuck the last three words in airquotes and stuck out his tongue for good measure.

Noct scowled, and Prompto filched Ignis' ID to get a better look. "Is that treason, Specs?"

"I'd call it honesty, Your Highness," Ignis said dryly. (His last name was 'Scientia', apparently.) "Is the invasion of my privacy really that necessary?"

Prompto dropped the card back into his bag with a muttered guilty _sorry_, even though Noct was still flipping through Ignis' notebooks. In a burst of bravery, he added, "If you ever want a good picture, call me. Photography's my thing."

"Thank you," Ignis said. He had very good manners, so it was hard to tell if he was just humoring Prompto... probably he was. It was cool. Prompto liked guys with good senses of humor. He decided that he should definitely add Ignis to his RPG party – his driving skills would be handy, plus Noct liked him already. Maybe he came with awesome sidequests. One way to find out.

*

The next of Noct's friends-slash-employees Prompto met was Gladio, who apparently had the unenviable job of tracking Noct down when he slipped his security detail.

"It sucks," Noct said, dragging Prompto out the bookshop's side door. "I have to tell Ignis if I'm walking home, and then plainclothes Crownsguard _stalk_ me." He ducked into a crowded marketplace, slipped up the stairs and past a row of fortunetellers' stalls, and then into a pharmacy which led through to a walkway over the stationfront intersection. "It must be great to be normal."

"Don't look at me," Prompto said quickly.

"Your parents are cool, though," Noct said. They followed the crowd to the diagonally-opposite staircase and down into the shopping arcade. The game center was just around the corner, and Noct glanced around like some kind of criminal before half-running in that direction.

Prompto jogged along with him, trying not to hit anyone with his school bag. "My parents don't care." Noct stared back at him for a moment, expression stormy, clearly hearing _don't care about me_ instead of _don't care where I go after school_, and Prompto made a face. " I mean, so long as the police don't call them. Hey – am I kidnapping you right now? Does the Citadel have a dungeon?"

"Can't talk about that, top secret. But we have a little museum on floors one and two with some torture stuff from my ancestors." Noct shrugged. "I'll send you a postcard."

"My folks would blow a gasket." They were anti-monarchy, and hadn't been at all happy when Prompto told them he was hanging out with Noct. "Do it."

They were at the game center now, slipping between UFO catchers into the cacophony of kids and game machines. They'd already stuffed their identifying school jackets and ties into their bags, and as long as they didn't cause trouble the staff here didn't care. Noct headed to the back to queue up at the new Nif Invaders console in the back, eyeing up his competitors in mecha-shooting carnage.

Prompto was going to beat all Noct's scores, though. He had a sharpshooter rep to maintain. Sorry not sorry, future King of Lucis.

They were on their second round – Noct wanted revenge – when the hair at the back of Prompto's neck stood on end, alerting him to a huge guy who'd just appeared out of nowhere. He was wearing civilian clothes, but he pinged Prompto's _something's fishy_ radar hard.

"Let me finish this up," Noct said tightly. "I have to kick Prompto's ass."

"There's gonna be a lot of ass-kicking going around," the guy said. He sounded super-threatening, but Noct seemed to know him. Prompto shifted a bit to stand between Noct and the guy, just in case. The movement drew attention to him, and earned him amused head-to-toe scrutiny before the guy held his hand out. "Gladio Amicitia. Come to fetch the brat home."

Prompto shook and introduced himself automatically. He half-expected his hand to be crushed, but Gladio was very professional, just like Ignis had been. He looked around the same age as Ignis, too, and Prompto hoped that meant he understood the need to blow off steam playing games.

"Is he in trouble?" Prompto asked. He didn't know what he could do if Noct was, but they were bros. He was legally required to stick up for him, under the bro code.

"He's always trouble," Gladio said darkly, and flicked Noct's earlobe. "You owe Iggy one, he canceled all his plans to go smooth things over with the Marshall." He raised an eyebrow at Prompto. "Six guys just earned themselves official reprimands for losing you two."

"So they called in the big guns." Noct punctuated his words with bursts from his in-game weapon, crippling a Nif armor so it toppled over and exploded.

"Use your head," Gladio said. He looked frustrated, like Noct was being unreasonable, while Gladio – and Ignis, apparently – was trying to keep the real-life situation from blowing up. "Your dad just let you move into your own place – _mine_ won't even allow that – and you're supposed to be responsible."

The legs from another mecha got blasted off. "Prompto lives alone."

Prompto went cold all down his spine. "Shit." He punched Noct in the shoulder, hard. "Am I the bad influence in this story? The girl from the wrong side of the tracks who teaches that the true meaning of happiness isn't money, it's the power of love and friendship? Like in that stupid bodyswap movie?"

"The book was better," Gladio said. "Come on, grumpy-pants, I think your little friend is leaving."

"I can leave just fine by myself," Prompto said, and he did. He wasn't even sure what he was so angry about, but he was, and he needed to get out into the fresh air; he could feel a headache coming on. Maybe it was all the lights and the noise, but suddenly it was too much. He headed for the road exit to avoid the throng of commuters hitting the shops on the way home from the station.

The car that picked Noct up from school was parked right there at the side of the road, government plates and armor plating and all, hazard lights blinking. A woman Prompto didn't recognize was in the driver's seat, though, and he felt a weird pang. He wondered if this was one of the things that Noct chafed at, that the people around him were interchangeable, positions and not names.

And the King was just another replaceable person, Prompto supposed. He bet it sucked to know that from the moment you were born, you didn't have any choice at all about your future. At least being a nobody commoner meant he didn't have to follow in his parents' footsteps if he didn't want to.

Which he didn't. He was proud of them: they'd come to the city with nothing but the clothes on their backs and a baby they'd taken pity on, and had worked their way up. But he didn't want to go into construction, much less work on the Wall with a hundred or two people who'd all know he was Ena and Tarrix Argentum's kid.

Everyone in all of Lucis knew Noct, though. Even though hardly anyone _knew_ him.

Prompto should probably go back inside, except he didn't want to apologize. He didn't know if he had anything to apologize _for_. The evening was getting chilly, and he dug out his jacket and pulled it on, buying time to think. Stay or go?

His phone chirped in his pocket and he dug it out. Noct.

_Sorry_, Noct wrote. _Are you already gone?"_

_I'm standing in front of your princemobile,_ Prompto sent back.

The reply was instant – _Wait up_ – and Prompto did, shoving his hands in his pockets.

Noct appeared a moment later, looking distraught, and was very sincerely tongue-tied as he tried to convince Prompto that whatever he'd meant wasn't what he'd said.

"It's cool," Prompto said, and watched Noct's shoulders drop, even as his eyes flicked across his face, scanning for evidence that he was just saying that.

"Good job, kids," Gladio said. He was looking a lot more like a bodyguard now, out here in the open; somehow, he seemed to take up more space. Maybe it was the bulk of his arms when he crossed them like that, threatening to burst the sleeves of his shirt. "We've learned today's lesson about friendship. Get in the car."

Prompto tried to beg off again, but Gladio said Noct was buying him Galahdian takeout to make it up to him, with his very own pocket money. Once they were on the road, Gladio asked Noct a bunch of questions about his classes at school and what he was learning now. Noct dutifully relayed the information, as well as reporting on Ignis' studies – less like he was trying to needle Gladio about something Prompto didn't understand, and more like he thought Gladio'd be interested. Prompto leaned his head back and let the conversation wash over him. He thought about whether to add Gladio to his mental RPG. He didn't know how many companion slots he was allowed, but Gladio seemed useful.

The next day over lunch in school, Noct said Gladio was his Shield, which was a hereditary position, and he'd had to quit school after junior high to start official training. (Prompto knew the first part already, because he'd Moogle-searched both Gladio and Ignis after he went home last night.)

"That sucks," Prompto offered.

Noct shrugged. "He's really smart, but his dad's traditional. Worse than mine."

"I guess... if the King's life depends on you, you've got to be serious about that." And Prompto bet that Noct liked Gladio just fine... except for whenever he had to take his job seriously. "I added him to my party."

Noct grinned wide. He liked to tease, but he always seemed secretly pleased that he wasn't the main character in the made-up game of Prompto's life. "I was first, though."

"I re-named your character Dorktis," Prompto said, straight-faced. "Truth in advertising."

Noct slapped a hand over his heart, deeply wounded. Prompto went back to finishing his boxed lunch.


	2. Chapter 2

In their second year of high school, Noct leveled up his whining game and finally got permission for Prompto to stay over on pre-approved nights provided there was no school the next day and his presence (quote-unquote) _wouldn't distract the Prince from official duties_. This worked out to be once or twice a term, but as Prompto pointed out while signing all sixteen pages of the mandatory Non-Disclosure Agreement, that was better than nothing.

He wasn't as entirely weirded out by Noct's ultra-rich lifestyle as he'd worried he would be. Yeah, the penthouse apartment had ostentatious marble in the foyer and leather furniture and an amazing view out over the city, but Noct seemed immune to all that. He left half-empty chip bags on the sofa and dirty socks on the kitchen counter, and was impressed by the games Prompto brought over, even though he bought them all secondhand. (Noct hadn't even known you could _do_ that.)

He didn't know what to make of Gladio and Ignis' roles in Noct's life, though. He'd figured they were government employees, but were they also, like, paid official friends? Gladio was Noct's official/unofficial personal trainer – there was one bedroom which has been set up as a private gym, where Gladio cheerfully introduced Prompto to muscles he'd never used before in his life. But he also dished out advice like he was an older brother trying to help his dweeb sibling be cooler.

Noct told Prompto that the last part was kind of true: Gladio was the only one of them with a sibling, and he figured she was too cute to harass so Gladio took out his family irritations on his friends.

Prompto had osmosed that Ignis' job, post-graduation, was some kind of personal assistant, in charge of ferrying Noct from place to place, managing his schedule and finances, and making sure his hair was combed for charity hand-shaking events. But Ignis, it turned out, also cleaned Noct's apartment, cooked him dinner more often than not, and helped him with his homework. The first two times Prompto stayed over, Ignis was there, fussing with things for a couple hours in the evening, and then he returned the next morning to make breakfast.

("Is he still on the clock?" Prompto whispered to Noct one night when Ignis was frowning over a particularly sloppy history essay, attempting to not be brutal with his edits.

Noct had looked baffled. "What?"

"Is he getting paid for this?" Prompto clarified, and Noct's irritated mystification increased.

"How would I know?")

Prompto found Gladio's intimidating personality easy to understand, if only because he let his frustration with his job and Noct show. He had a family and a life outside of working in the Crownsguard, and sometimes he wanted to prioritize them. Prompto could also ask him for tips on running and training and get good advice, and Gladio kept suggesting weapons Prompto might want to try working with. (He'd been the first to ask outright about Prompto's wristband, even though Prompto knew Noct had been eaten up with curiosity. Prompto told him the same story as always, that he'd broken it and had gross surgical scars. Gladio had tested his range of movement, said he was fine, and badgered him to start weight training.)

But Prompto didn't get Ignis at all, and it bugged him. Noct had told him Ignis was his oldest friend and had pictures of the two of them as kids pinned to the corkboard over his desk. Ignis was good at some kind of martial arts, Noct said: good enough that he'd been allowed to join Crownsguard training while still working his full-time job.

"Does he sleep?" Prompto asked, honestly baffled. No wonder Ignis got so irritated whenever Prompto tried to chat – he'd probably been wasting time that had been scheduled down to the minute.

Noct shrugged. "Dunno. He used to, when we were little."

Prompto's parents were union organizers; he knew a thing or two about labor laws, but he wasn't sure if they applied to people who worked for the Crown. They _should_, in the sense of setting a good example, but... He thought about messaging his parents and asking, but he knew they'd ask awkward questions right back at him, like about what he wanted to do after graduation and whether Prince Noctis had any influence in certain government committees. He could ask Ignis, he supposed, but Ignis tended to deflect questions about himself. Prompto didn't even know what Ignis' parents did, and he'd as good as asked point-blank.

If this were a game, though, he'd have different ways to raise his relationship points with his party members. He could train together, like he did with Gladio. He could have deep heartfelt conversations like he did with Noct, stuff about dreams and goals and the future of the whole country. But he couldn't see himself getting away with that with Ignis.

Which left sidequests.

Prompto had permission from school to get a part-time summer job, and he'd signed on with a local photography studio to do candid snaps at camps and sporting events. The shop owner was in his fifties and made it clear that he'd rather stay in his air conditioned shop and pay a kid to sweat out four-day soccer tournaments, but Prompto didn't mind. He got to borrow some sweet equipment, and the money was good. He'd done his budgeting and figured he'd make enough to last the rest of the school year; at the least, he wouldn't be counting pocket change and having to decide between food _or_ bills if his parents were late sending him his monthly allowance.

The point was, he had enough that he could afford to buy random stuff, if he wanted, or go places, if necessary. Total sidequest readiness.

The next time he saw Ignis was when Noct got permission to see _Knives Out_ at the Cinema 8. Prompto was invited, which was pretty cool, except that he felt at least a third of the seats were occupied by people who looked suspiciously like Crownsguard. Gladio and Ignis were sitting right behind them, and Gladio laughed every time Promto jumped. Ignis had smuggled in his own popcorn which smelled amazing, and when Noct said so – not even sounding particularly covetous – Ignis insisted on trading with him. Noct and Prompto finished all of it before the first jumpscare (it was spicy and _amazing_), while Gladio and Ignis made the concession-stand bucket last right to the end of the film.

Noct had to go to the Citadel for dinner with his dad afterward – like he'd be able to eat after the popcorn and the XL soda – and it was pretty cool how all the undercover guards blended with the crowd but also made sure that Noct got whisked out and away with no one the wiser. Prompto guessed they were probably wise to Noct's tricks by now. Prompto took the elevator with Gladio and Ignis and Noct down to the basement parking level to say goodbye, and tugged Ignis off to the side at the last possible second to pass him the note he'd written the night before.

Prompto's phone vibrated as he was slogging through the evening crowd of office workers, heading for the Red line as quickly as he could without sweating too much. It was way too hot to wear gross clothes, and he didn't want to risk getting a cold on the trains. All around him the shopping arcade was jam-packed, with hawkers for restaurants and clubs trying to shout each other down, so he ducked into a side street, full of parked bicycles and bins, to read the message.

_What was that?_ Noct had sent him, probably from the backseat of the car. Prompto pictured him on the highway, enjoying the air conditioning as Ignis drove.

Aw. Poor Noct, feeling left out. _I want his salad recipe,_ Prompto replied, grinning to himself. He added all the vegetable emojis he had, just to be clear.

_UGH_, Noct sent, and then a moment later, _He wants to know which one._

Prompto rolled his eyes. He was such a liar, poor Ignis. _Remember that grated carrot salad? With raisins and nuts? It'd be awesome if he could send that! (Tell Ignis THANK YOU.)_

_He says no prob_. Noct included his own commentary via the little green about-to-barf emoji dude.

Prompto made sure to swing by the supermarket on his way home and buy a bag of carrots. He was committed now.

Ignis didn't reply until half past ten, when Prompto was already in bed and dozing. He apologized for the late hour and attached a link to a CookTon recipe page – not quite _let me Moogle that for you_, but close.

But in his next comment he noted all of the substitutions he'd made to adapt the recipe to Noct's taste and requirements, and said he'd be willing to answer any questions Prompto had.

_Thank you!!!!_ Prompto replied, and added a few flowers and chocobo chicks while he was thinking. _I really do love that salad and will make it tomorrow and send Noct pics so he'll be jealous thinking I'm your new fave, but I also have to say sorry? Because I wanted to give you my number so I could ask you about Noct's birthday present, but I am Not Subtle._ He sent another chocobo chick, and a cactuar. _Can I talk to you tomorrow? Unless you're mad at me?_

_Not at all_, Ignis sent back. _That would be fine._ After a moment of deliberation, a small emoji dagger appeared.

_AND NOW I'M NEVER SLEEPING AGAIN_, Prompto sent back, which was another lie. He conked out as soon as his head hit the pillow.

He woke up right before his alarm, which meant it was going to be a good day. He went on his morning run, checked his phone over breakfast to see if his parents had sent him anything, and composed his request to Ignis on the train to work.

He knew it was probably a dumb latchkey-kid thing, but he liked figuring out how he could be useful to people. Case in point, Noct. He'd needed a friend, just like Luna had said; someone who knew he was the prince but who also could mock him when he sulked after losing a boss fight, and share his awesome popcorn.

Ignis, though. Ignis made a point of not needing anything from anyone, while very efficiently taking care of _their_ needs – Noct first and foremost, of course. Prompto'd assumed his self-containment was because he didn't want to give Noct the satisfaction of knowing when he got under his skin, at first, but he'd realized fairly recently that the result was he knew next to nothing about Ignis. Not his favorite color, or what he thought about the movie, if he liked Prompto or just tolerated him, what he did for fun.

It was sad, Prompto thought, that Ignis had been in his RPG party for a year and he still hadn't raised their relationship stat over "kind of acquaintances". Ignis had tricked him into inaction, by being intimidating on the one hand and boringly adult on the other. He went to Council meetings and always wore perfectly-ironed clothes, what could he possibly need from Prompto?

Well. Prompto was going to figure it out.

He assumed Ignis would have to be tricked right back, so the part about wanting a present for Noct was true. Seeing as how Prompto had access to a photo studio for the month and a boss who was a slacker, he thought he could print up some nice pictures and frame them, or put together an album or something. Noct seemed to dig the scrapbook that Lady Lunafreya sent him, after all.

But he didn't know if that was allowed – the copy of his NDA was full of dense legal terms – or, if it was, whether what he could afford to do would look cheap and tacky. He didn't want to give Noct something he was embarrassed by. (After a bit of hesitation, he sent Ignis the max amount he had budgeted, even though he wasn't sure Ignis understood money like normal people.)

_It's not that Noct's place looks like a hotel room_, he wrote. _But even my folks have family pictures on the walls. Not that he'd have to make holes in the walls!_ he added quickly. _There are photo stands, too. So... are you free for shopping? I'll owe you big time!_

Ignis had probably taken a course on professional customer service, or whatever it was called when you worked for the King, because he was always polite and never said no. But because Prompto knew him through his relationship with Noct, he was familiar with Ignis being polite but irritated, or stressed, or about to stab Noct if he picked out one more carrot from his soup. So he was easily able to detect from the slightly-delayed reply a polite but overscheduled Ignis. Nonetheless... he was still going to drag him out of the Citadel for his own ulterior purposes.

Prompto checked Ignis' availability against his own work schedule, and just like that, he had a date for next Monday after work.

Well. Not a _date_-date. He tried to picture, very briefly, what kind of person Ignis probably dated. He couldn't imagining him settling for anyone not as amazing as he was, so they'd have to be talented, suave, and very probably rich. Maybe someone from the elite school he'd attended, who knew things like why different wines were served in different glasses and how the stock exchange worked. Basically a checklist of _not anyone like me_, which kind of sucked – Ignis was good-looking and dating an aristocrat would make Prompto's parents absolutely flip – but it wasn't like Prompto liked Ignis that much, anyway.

Halfway through their shopping expedition, he was starting to re-evaluate that statement. He'd met Ignis right outside of the honest-to-goodness department store and they'd taken the elevator up to the seventh floor, which had some of the fanciest household and stationery stuff Prompto had ever seen in his life. Ignis seemed right at home, though – maybe this was where he usually came to buy a thousand-yen ballpoint pen? (Let's be real: he probably never looked at price tags, and just bought whatever caught his eye, provided it wasn't flashier than anything Noct would own or use.)

When they got to the art corner, with frames and stuff, Prompto was relieved to see that they had a decent selection for under ten thousand. Not that he wanted to be cheap with the prince, but...

"Were you thinking of one," Ignis asked, casting his discerning eye over the collection, "or perhaps a selection?"

"I've got shots of you and Noct and Gladio," Prompto said; he'd made a folder of his top five choices. "And there should be one empty frame for a pic of him and his dad. I figure I can do a whole bunch of prince prints."

Ignis nodded. "I can picture that." And then, just to make it clear he was starting something, "Well. Let's have a look. Six forbid Noct continue to be just another frameless youth."

Prompto grinned so hard his cheeks hurt. "Here's to frame and fortune, dude."

And just like that, suddenly it was easy to point out the ones he thought were nice and ask Ignis what he thought, and Ignis was polite but... not exactly catty, but a bit snobbish, in a hilarious way that made Prompto see that... yeah. Maybe that shade of green _didn't_ go with Noct's décor at all, even if the gold scrollwork around the edges was nice, but on the other hand, he gave Ignis pushback over whether there was such a thing as too much black.

"You could stand to be a bit more colorful yourself," Prompto pointed out, picking up one of the cheapest frames. It was painted in a pattern of orange chocobo tracks, meant for a child, but he held it up to Ignis' shoulder like he was checking how well it matched. It kind of did, though, seeing as Ignis was dressed in his work outfit of black, white, and gray. 

"And you seem to be developing a death wish," Ignis said. "Focus."

Prompto stuck his tongue out. "What's your favorite color that's not black?"

"Purple," Ignis said, but only after his eyes had flicked quickly over the frame selection to confirm that there was nothing horrible and purple there. "Have you reached a decision yet?"

"Yeah." Prompto pointed to a group of frames over on the side, simple in Duscaen oak, without any design details that would detract from the pictures. Pricey, but within budget. "I can get one each of three sizes, that'll work, right?"

Ignis picked one up and turned it around in his hands, eyes narrowed as he checked the workmanship or something, then nodded. "That should be fine."

"Cool." Prompto bit his lip and realized he had no idea how he was supposed to actually buy stuff here. There wasn't a cash register located conveniently under a large hanging yen sign. "Um."

But Ignis was already raising his hand to summon a sales clerk out of the ether, and before Prompto knew what was happening he had a fancy green department store bag with all three frames inside, boxed and wrapped, and his wallet was significantly lighter.

"Cool," he repeated, as they headed back toward the elevators. "Hey – they've got a cafe upstairs, let me buy you a coffee or something as thanks for today."

Ignis paused, looking taken aback for a moment. "You don't need to."

Prompto nudged him with his elbow; he wasn't as intimidated by Ignis anymore. "But I want to. Unless the cafe's no good?"

"I enjoy it," Ignis admitted, so Prompto bullied him into leading the way there.

The shop was on the roof, and had a main room with huge windows on three sides, and an outdoors patio that overlooked a somewhat scraggly garden, where lanterns had been strung up for the summer festival season. They both ordered cake and coffee sets – Prompt crossed his heart and swore to never tell Noct that Ignis had ever eaten dessert before his dinner – and Ignis produced a point card at the register while Prompto was paying, looking slightly shamefaced, but Prompto was happy to help him get that much closer to a free cup of coffee.

No one else was braving the heat outside, so they grabbed a window-side table for two. Prompto nearly blurted out that they had a great view of the Citadel, but duh, like Ignis would have overlooked that. But that reminded him...

"Can you see your house from here?" he asked.

"Hm?" Whoops, Ignis had been having a moment with his coffee, and he looked confused for a moment by the question. He glanced outside with a slight frown. "Wrong direction, I'm afraid. My apartment's further south." He nodded sideways, towards the garden-side window. He didn't return the question, but Prompto suspected that was because he knew exactly where Prompto's house was and was privy to some kind of extraction plan in case of Worst Case Scenario Fifteen: Noct running away to hide out in the suburbs.

But now Prompto was curious. "Do you live alone, too, like Noct?" He took a bite of his cake, and closed his eyes to savor the moment. It was totally worth the ridiculous price. 

Ignis... didn't quite snort, but he did huff a bit in amusement, the corner of his mouth twitching up. "Not at all like Noct, but yes. My uncle's legal obligation to support me ended when I left school, and I wanted a shorter commute, so it made sense to move downtown."

"It's nice to have your own space, I bet." Prompto thought the circumstances sounded dire – even his parents weren't planning to give him the boot when he turned eighteen; they fought a lot, but there was never any question that Argentums stuck together for life. He decided he disliked Ignis' uncle for pulling such a dick move. "My folks are out for work a lot, so it's _almost_ like I have the house to myself, but like... I could never leave dishes in the sink or move the furniture around or whatever. Buy yellow curtains."

Ignis raised an eyebrow. "Would you _want_ them?"

Prompto took another bite and thought about it. "Probably not. But I have fantasies of getting an old-school film camera and turning my parents' walk-in closet into a darkroom. How cool would that be?"

Ignis nodded and started in on his cake, while Prompto mentally regrouped. He was supposed to be finding out more about Ignis, not babbling on about himself yet again. He thought about asking about his job, but who wanted to talk about work in their free time? (Well, Ignis, probably, but that didn't mean Prompto should let him.)

What he ended up blurting out was, "Do you have your own car, too?" He felt his face get red across the cheeks as soon as the question was out there, hanging between them, because how random was that, asking out of the blue?

But Ignis' eyes got a gleam, similar to the way he'd looked over the coffee menu. "I do, yes. Which my uncle referred to as a shameful waste."

Prompto grinned and made a come-on gesture. "Excellent. I bet it kicks ass. Is it purple?"

"_No_," Ignis said, looking almost offended, and then he caved and pulled his phone out. He had pictures. Of course he did.

Prompto knew nothing about cars, aside from the basics (they got you from A to B, and some of them were cooler than others), but that was fine. He learned about machinery fast, courtesy having parents in construction and photography as a hobby. He checked out all the pictures of Ignis' sleek black indulgence and let the tidal wave of statistics sink in, nodding appreciatively and making little encouraging noises when Ignis paused, as if taken aback by his own enthusiasm.

"I must be boring you," Ignis said abruptly. He'd been leaning over the table so he could point out the detailing and the high-tech features on the dash, but now he leaned back, taking his phone and pictures with him. In the space of two breaths, he curbed his enthusiasm entirely, becoming Mr All-Business again.

Prompto squinted at this transformation dubiously. "When I'm bored, man, I'll tell you. This," he circled a finger in front of his nose, "is my _trying not to beg to be taken for a ride_ face." _Shit_, that came out sounding dirty, and while Noct would just laugh at him and call him a dweeb, Ignis wasn't used to how very often Prompto stuck his feet in his mouth. And after that whole wordplay-off they'd had earlier, there was no way Ignis would miss his monumental awkwardness. RIP Prompto.

Ignis' professional facade cracked all to pieces, but he managed not to laugh in Prompto's face. "I'm afraid I walked here today," he said. "But perhaps some other time."

"That'd be," Prompto's throat had gone dry, "awesome." He picked up his coffee cup and took a long slow swallow. Across the table, Ignis did the same, and then glanced at the time and winced. "You've got to run?"

"I have a meeting in half an hour," Ignis said. "My apologies – "

"For what?" Prompto pointed at his bag. "You saved my ass. Finish your cake, though, if that's really all you're having for dinner. Or do you get food at the meeting?"

"Indigestion, more likely," Ignis muttered, picking up his fork, and then looked taken aback to have actually complained out loud.

"I'm so happy my job is one hundred percent meeting-free," Prompto said. "I just do what I'm told. Even if that's to be at the regional swim meet by seven tomorrow morning. Sure, okay, yup. The boss doesn't care that all the sun's turning me into one giant freckle." He watched the last bite of Ignis' cake disappear and then realized he still had half his left. He set to work shoveling it in, three-two-one last bite and gone. Damn, that was tasty. He should have given Ignis half, maybe he could figure out how to copy it for Noct's birthday.

They parted ways in the same spot they'd met up, and Prompto watched Ignis walk away until the crowd swallowed him up. He felt giddy and successful, but he half-wished that maybe they could have hung out and talked more. Walked through the shop and made bad puns about all the fancy expensive things, maybe got dinner later. It sucked that Ignis was so busy, he thought. Otherwise he'd definitely try this again. He sent Ignis off a message on the subway home, saying thanks and best wishes for a short meeting.

The rest of the month passed in a haze of work, running all over the city and shooting things. He barely had time to talk to Noct, who was squeezing in a ton of princely duties. Hospital charity fundraisers, memorial services, photo ops with war orphans, survival training with Gladio – that was the only thing Noct actually enjoyed, to judge by the flood of pictures he sent of him holding various dead fish with pride in his eyes.

For Noct's birthday dinner, Ignis grilled a couple of the eels he'd caught, sliced and served over rice, and baked more of the Tenebraen tarts that Noct liked, even though Noct still said the recipe wasn't quite right. Noct opened his presents while Prompto stretched out on the floor to digest; he went quiet for a moment when he unwrapped Prompto's, and Prompto's heart skipped a beat in anticipation of disaster. But then Noct grinned and said _thank you_ and showed Ignis and Gladio the pictures Prompto'd chosen. He'd worked hard to get shots where everyone was smiling and happy. Good memories, he hoped, to keep Noct company.


	3. Chapter 3

"Yo, Ignis," Prompto said from where he was stretched out on Noct's floor, head pillowed on his wadded-up school blazer. Then he did a double-take and sat up fast. "You look _terrible_."

These days he was comfortable teasing Ignis for having the trendiest hairstyle possible, but seeing his hair flat and uncombed felt like the fundamental laws of the universe had come undone, or something.

"Thank you," Ignis answered, stuffed up and sarcastic, squinting judgmentally down at Prompto through watering eyes. "As always, a delight talking with you, Prompto."

"Why are you here, though?" Prompto went on, tucking his knees up to kick his way upright, and making his way over to investigate.

He could feel Noct watching him, but he didn't care; no one had made Prompto join their stoic manliness club, so he wasn't even breaking the rules when he slid his hand under Ignis' limp bangs. Ignis made an affronted noise, and Prompto countered with his best _don't fuck with me_ glare.

"Fever," he announced, grinning as he pulled his hand back before Ignis decided to detach it. That gave him serious leverage. "Hey, Noct – you've got a whole week of meetings and state dinners with the Accordo people, right?"

Noct's chin went up, eyes narrow and assessing. "The delegation arrives the day after tomorrow."

"Sure would suck if you caught Ignis' cold," Prompto hinted, heavy like a hammer.

He saw both Noct and Ignis catch his meaning, nearly simultaneously: Noct with sudden determination, Ignis with chagrin.

Noct fished his phone out of his bag. "I'll get Gladio to drive you home."

"That's hardly – " Ignis interrupted himself with a sneeze. Thank the Six Prompto had seen that coming and was ready with a handkerchief before aerosolized germs went all over the place.

"You been at work all day, Specs?" Noct asked. He'd gotten up from the floor, but he hung back. Prompto was sure he was exaggerating his reluctance to approach, but damn if Ignis didn't look guilty for bringing his plague anywhere near Noct. He took far too much pride in his professionalism to even consider taking time off when Noct was expected to work, but: "Go get some _sleep_."

That was an order. Ignis' shoulders slumped. "My apologies."

Noct made a strangled noise of frustration, and jabbed a finger at a chair. "Sit down before you fall over." He waited for Ignis to comply, and then stomped off to the bathroom, where he could be heard rummaging through the medicine cabinet.

And hey, speaking of rummaging. Prompto grabbed up his bag and headed into Noct's kitchen. The crown prince wouldn't wither away and die if Prompto stole some carrots and potatoes and a quarter of a cabbage and – oh yeah, good stuff – a neatly labeled package of frozen chicken.

"Munchies?" Noct asked, returning. He looked at Prompto like he'd gone nuts; to be fair, Prompto was caught red-handed, filching his expensive brand-name organic boullion cubes.

"Soup," Prompto said, as quietly as he could. Noct's eyes rounded, and he gave Prompto an encouraging thumbs-up, tossing a bunch of random medicines into his school bag on top of the vegetables. Ignis and Noct had been at each other's throats lately about all the official stuff that encroached on Noct's life, but he wasn't the kind of person to hold that against Ignis. He still cared for him a lot, obviously.

Prompto wasn't going to let his brain even consider being jealous; instead, he grabbed a bottle of water from the fridge and gestured for Noct to go give it to Ignis, who was listing listlessly. On any other day, Prompto would try to impress Ignis with that bit of wordplay, but... maybe not now.

"Bottoms up," Noct said, as Ignis stared at the bottle. He backed away to drop onto the couch, looking antsy until Ignis obediently took a sip, and then sneezed some more into Prompto's handkerchief.

Prompto was relieved to get a move on when Gladio turned up; the atmosphere was way too tense at Noct's, with Ignis trying and failing to rally and Noct attempting to say comforting things that all came out sounding robotic and fake. Gladio warned Noct that he'd be back and Noct had better be ready to bring him up to speed with the Accordo stuff. Noct wheedled a promise of take-out noodles in return, and gave Ignis a tentative wave and wishes for improved health.

On the way to Ignis' apartment in one of the royal loaner cars – with Gladio behind the wheel, an exciting new experience in sudden braking – Gladio didn't question that Prompto had appointed himself in charge. Maybe he thought Prompto had been put on the job by Noct or something.

"Your uncle back from Galahd yet?" Gladio asked, glancing at Ignis in the rearview mirror.

Ignis shook his head, and then rubbed at the back of his neck like it was stiff. "No one expects the negotiations to go smoothly or quickly."

"I'll let him know you're under the weather," Gladio said, his voice flat, like there was no way Ignis was going to dissuade him. Ignis lifted one shoulder as if he lacked the energy to put up even a token protest.

Ignis lived in a sterile-looking building, with a lobby made entirely out of polished steel and mirrors and a complicated-looking security system that Gladio breezed through, leading the way to the elevator block and floor eight.

With Prompto's newly-developed eye for the lifestyles of the rich and aristocratic, he guessed that Ignis had probably gotten half his furniture as family cast-offs (like most guys moving into their own place for the first time). Just in his case the cast-offs were all really gorgeous (if slightly threadbare and damaged) antiques, including one of those creepy portraits of Oracle Sylva holding sylleblossoms, where her eyes followed you around. There were a few modern pieces, mixed in so neatly – yet soullessly – that Prompto bet a professional designer had been involved.

Gladio must have been over a lot, because he moved Ignis back toward what Prompto assumed was the bathroom with easy familiarity, taking his temperature and telling him he was going to have a bath – "sweat it out" – and asking where his pajamas were.

"Did I invite you in?" Ignis asked, but that was just a ghost of his usual snark. As Prompto got a pot of water going and unloaded his groceries, he heard Gladio pronounce that he didn't care, and then Ignis grumbling weakly that the place was a mess.

"Oh yeah," Gladio said. Prompto could hear the accompanying eyeroll from the kitchen. "Real disaster zone." And a door banged shut – probably right in Gladio's face.

"You good here?" Gladio asked, returning. He had a trashcan full of gross tissues in hand, and emptied it into a bin concealed in a cabinet. "I'm going to run a wash and then go knock Noct around some."

Prompto found a cutting board and plucked one of the least intimidating-looking knives from the block. "Will you really be able to cover for Iggy with the Accord people?" He always wanted to call them Accordians, but he was fairly sure that was wrong.

"I'm big, not dumb." Gladio gave Prompto a wink. "And I'm magnificent in formalwear."

Prompto answered straight from the animal part of his brain. "I bet you are." The mental image was nearly enough to make chopping the onion a dangerous undertaking for his fingers. "I'll text you my schedule for the next few days if you need me here. I have school and work tomorrow, though."

Gladio frowned, like he was annoyed with himself for not remembering straight off that Prompto wasn't one of the servants whose lives revolved around Noct. "I'll ask the Citadel doctor to swing by. Might not be until the morning, though, unless he gets a lot worse. I _think_ he just wore himself out."

Prompto didn't have much experience with being sick; his parents had made sure he got all his shots. Better a few sore arms than having to miss school for a week, they felt. They also were unsubtle about supplying him with multivitamins. "I can stay until morning," he offered. "From here to school," he checked his mental map, "I'd have to leave seven-thirty, latest."

"Your parents'll be okay with that?"

"They're on quadrant four this month," Prompto said, before he recalled that probably Gladio had no familiarity with wall maintenance schedules. "It's too far to commute, they camp out there. I'll text them."

Gladio gave him a dubious look, but shrugged and went off to do his chores. When he came back he sent off a flurry of texts himself, leaning back against the counter instead of sitting down. Prompto wondered if he was afraid of Ignis' delicate antique dining chairs. They didn't look all that sturdy.

Prompto chatted with Gladio, mostly about whether he should enter the all-city Solstice marathon (Gladio thought yes), until he had to head out twenty minutes later, while Ignis was drying his hair and venting his irritation at everything Gladio had done and arranged. Prompto braced himself to be groused at next, considering he'd had the temerity to make free use of Ignis' kitchen.

But instead Ignis just stood in the kitchen doorway with an adorably bemused expression on his face, barefoot and wearing a black velour coerl-print tracksuit, and said, "Why are you here?"

Prompto gestured at the pot on the burner. "Soup." Ignis had a built-in water filtration system in his sink, from which Prompto filled a glass with a flourish and handed it over. "You feeling better?"

Ignis' glare would have been one-hundred-percent more baleful if his hair wasn't all fluffy and soft-looking. It tempted Prompto to touch, but he didn't want to die today. "Immeasurably."

Prompto pointed at the thermometer set out on the table. "Sit, give me a data point. I'll make you some toast. You dizzy? Head rush, headache?" He'd found a nice loaf of what looked like home-baked bread in the fridge and carved off a couple of slices, which he popped in the toaster.

Ignis' fever was down to 38.2, which wasn't a great improvement, and he still had a headache, but he managed to put away half a bowl of soup and half a slice of toast. Prompto kept refilling his glass, and gave him some of Noct's cold medicine. Gladio had texted that the doctor would be by early, but until then over-the-counter stuff couldn't hurt; plus all the medicine Noct had tossed in Prompto's bag had probably been purchased by Ignis in the first place. Noct was super-sulky when he got sick, and tended to snap at Ignis when fussed over, so curing him as quickly as possible was always the top priority.

(Someday, Noct always said, he'd master magic well enough to cure himself. _Please do_, was Ignis' unimpressed rote response. Noct had tried to cure Ignis' acne with magic last year, and had accidentally made it so he couldn't grow a beard at all. Ignis still held it against him sometimes.)

Prompto made Ignis go to bed, reading to him from a random book on the desk until Ignis fell asleep to preserve his sanity from badly-written speculative fiction. After he conked out, Prompto cleaned the bathroom and kitchen while texting with Noct and Gladio; not that there was that much to do. By default, Ignis' place was usually sterile, he suspected.

He finished up his homework and then settled down to sleep on Ignis' amazingly comfortable velvet sofa. He got up when his alarm went off at five, hung the wash out on the balcony, and made up a breakfast plate that he left on the empty bottom shelf of the refrigerator. He'd told Gladio to bring groceries when he could; all signs pointed to Ignis having continued to take good care of Noct while too ill to feed himself properly. There'd even been an empty Cup Noodle thing in the trash; sinking that low must have been an act of desperation on Ignis' part. A culinary cry for help.

At half past six, when Prompto got the message that the Citadel doctor was on her way, he slipped into Ignis' room feeling like an intruder (which he kind of totally was). While the living-dining room had generic rich-person decor, everything in the bedroom was was plain and practical, with no decorations aside from one of Prompto's selfies of the four of them in a tacky purple chocobo frame on the desk (Prompto couldn't decide if knowing Ignis had kept the gift was heartwarming or heartbreaking). Nothing was out of place, all was perfectly clean and painful to look at, in Prompto's opinion. He supposed Ignis might spend all his fun money on his car, but couldn't he at least get a poster for his boring off-white walls?

Maybe Prompto would have to do something about that later, but for now he gave Ignis' shoulder a light shake. "Hey, Iggy," he said. "Sorry it's stupid early, man, but the doctor's almost here."

Ignis opened his eyes just enough to confirm that Prompto was standing there, and then closed them again. "Give me a moment." He took a breath, and one hand reached up to start pushing the covers aside.

"Stay down," Prompto said, pulling the comforter (pale blue, thin, not very comforting) back up to Ignis' chin. "You don't need to get up."

Ignis made a complicated, confused expression that culminated in a series of sneezes. Prompto was quick to pass him the tissue box. When the eruption was over, he held out the bin to collect the gross wad of used tissues and then went to figure out how to buzz someone up from the building's main entrance. (There was an entire control panel next to the front door, with a video screen and everything. Not quite as secure as a 24/7 royal guard on the building, but still impressive.)

When he managed to get the doctor into the building and up to the right apartment – which he'd never have accomplished without his advanced video gaming skills – he showed her to Ignis' room and then backed off. Let Ignis have some privacy while he was poked and examined.

The doctor re-emerged after a few minutes, and Prompto offered her a glass of water. "I'm scared of messing up his coffee machine," he said, pointing at the thing where it sat on the counter, looking expensive, elegant, and very, very breakable. "Sorry."

She took the glass and smiled at him, and suddenly Prompto went hot and cold all through, wondering just who she thought he was, and what she assumed he was doing here. Like... did she think he was a servant? A friend from the fancy aristocrats' school? Some random kid off the street? He was very certain that he didn't look like he belonged here.

"Thought that counts," she said, and sipped from her glass. Her accent was just nasal enough that Prompto could place her as an immigrant, and that was... a relief, and kind of funny. He wondered if she knew his parents – though he guessed she was Crownsguard, and they weren't allowed to unionize, according to Noct. "It's just a cold," she went on. "The bug that's going around now. I'll have Gladio deliver some medicine, but what he needs most is rest. Most people don't push themselves until they get this bad."

Prompto had a suspicion Ignis didn't know how to kick back and take it easy, but no worries. He had wisdom born of experience he'd be glad to pass on.

*

"Give me your phone, Mister Bored-pants," Prompto said, sticking his hand out and wiggling his fingers impatiently. He was sitting on Ignis' floor, and his ass was starting to go numb. He stretched his legs out and flexed his toes. "Come on. I'll install the game and teach you some tricks so you can kick Noct's ass, and then," dramatic pause, widening his eyes, "I'll let you shower."

Ignis glared. "You do realize that this is my house, and I'll damn well shower whenever I please."

"You just nearly threw that book across the room," Prompto pointed out. He held up a finger. "You hate crossword puzzles," finger two, " and you need to stay up a few more hours or else you'll fuck up your sleep schedule. A nice mindless game is just what the doctor ordered."

"No she didn't," Ignis muttered, but after a moment he unlocked his phone and passed it over.

"Noct says the worst part of getting better is when you stop needing to sleep all the time," Prompto said, hoping that sounded encouraging. "I don't get sick, but that seems right. It's got to suck being awake but not having the oomph to get back into the swing of things." The little _installing_ meter on Ignis' phone took no time at all to reach 100%, either because the building's WiFi was insanely good or because his phone was. Maybe both.

He twisted around and knelt up so he could explain the rules. Ignis was sitting in the corner of the sofa with his feet up, wrapped in the comforter and leaning back on his pillow. His fever had only just broken that afternoon, and apparently he'd taken that as a sign that he was all better, good as new, and fit for work. When Gladio had swung by, he'd found Ignis fully dressed and sitting down in the entrance hall, where apparently he'd nearly toppled over from dizziness while trying to put his shoes on.

It was a good fucking thing, Gladio had grumbled when he called Prompto to see if he could take over Ignis-sitting, that he hadn't tried to drive in his condition. Ignis had been grounded to the sofa with the books Gladio had brought over, and put under orders to finish a meal, take his medicine, and rehydrate. (Ignis hated having a running nose, and tried to ward it off by not drinking as much as Gladio thought he should; Prompto's arrival probably prevented them from getting into a fight over it. Again.)

So here they were, a despised pot of herbal tea slowly chilling on the table and Ignis too miserable to care that he had a witness to his epic sulk. Prompto showed him how to connect up the balloons on the screen by color to get points, while avoiding the balloon-popping cactuar and tonberry attacks. Ignis learned pretty quickly and seemed amused by the Moogle-Up animations, and Prompto had plenty of stupid gaming anecdotes to distract him whenever he got hit by another wave of sneezing and coughing. No wonder he couldn't shake the headache, with his skull all stuffed full of snot.

Once Ignis was up to speed, Prompto started a two-player challenge; Ignis wasn't good at trash-talking, but he did unleash his pent up frustrations via biting sarcasm, making Prompto laugh so hard he got literal tears in his eyes, which he swiped away dramatically.

"Don't mind my delicate hurt feelings," he said, still grinning as his phone ping-ping-pinged in distress after a brutal sneak attack.

"Alright then," Ignis said, eyes focused intently on his screen, "I won't."

Prompto saw him launch not one but _three_ of his captured tonberries at his balloon field and swore as he swiped frantically to try and avert disaster. He ended up with just a couple of sad balloons drifting down to the now-empty stage.

"Did I win?" Ignis asked idly, as if he was just making sure Prompto was aware he'd been not just defeated, more like annihilated. Prompto dropped his head onto the sofa and whimpered. "Beginner's luck, I'm sure. We should play for actual stakes."

Prompto raised one limp hand and pointed towards the bathroom. "Go. Shower. I'll heat up your victory dinner while I mourn my lost gamer cred."

Ignis sat up and put his feet on the floor, paused like he was checking for head rush, and then made his way to the hallway with only a slight waver in his stride.

"And throw your jammies in the laundry," Prompto called after him. "Cleanliness, godliness!" He could admit to himself that he had an ulterior motive: he liked seeing what other tacky sleepwear Ignis owned. The black coeurl print was his favorite so far, but the dancing vegetables pajamas Gladio had dressed Ignis in (probably as a punishment) were also adorable.

"But these are _my favorites_," Ignis said in clear imitation of Noct, and the bathroom door shut decisively.

Prompto fell back to lie flat on the floor, feeling wiped out – taking care of someone was exhausting, especially since he felt keenly that his nurturing skills were nonexistent – but then pulled his knees up and kicked himself up to standing. He had stuff to do, and Gladio and Noct were counting on him.

He sent off a quick update to Noct, who'd pumped him for information about Ignis' condition at school, and started scheming as he reheated the soup. Something had to give, and he didn't want it to be Ignis. He liked the guy now.

*

The next day, on their way out the school gates, Prompto told Noctis, "I'm coming over," right at the place where he usually veered left to take the subway home. "Thanks for inviting me."

Noct made a face. "I'm not really in the mood."

Like Prompto was in the mood for dealing with yet another cranky person, either. But some things you just had to do, he told Noct, as he invited himself into the car. The Crownsguard driver was a new dude, but Prompto'd cleared this visit with Gladio, so his name was on the list of approved passengers. He felt special.

Ignis had texted him last night, saying he had somehow finangled the doctor's permission to start work from Monday, and he didn't need Prompto to come over. He'd be fine on his own, he said.

Prompto'd already swapped his Friday evening shift for opening both Saturday and Sunday, so he felt kind of put out, wondering what he was going to do with all his free time. But then he'd thought about what kind of horrors were probably waiting for Ignis in Noct's apartment, and well... here he was.

He'd thrown the basics into his school bag that morning, when the idea had still been vague: general all-purpose cleaner, the stuff for nasty spots, rags and dusters, rubber gloves, and a bunch of garbage bags. When Noct let him into his apartment, Prompto lined this all up on the bare (and dusty) shoe locker in the front hall and explained that they were going to clean the place top to bottom.

"Why?" Noct asked, crossing his arms and leaning against the wall

"You think Ignis wants to blame himself for getting sick, neglecting his duties, _and_ you having cockroaches? Have you ever even seen a cockroach?" Prompto stripped down to his undershirt, leaving his jacket and shirt on top of his bag. "You can handle an hour of cleaning. And," he added, because he didn't think Ignis comprehended how deep Noct's willful lack of knowledge went, "I'll explain what to do, don't worry."

They tackled the kitchen first, because Prompto thought the towers of Noodle Cups would make Ignis weep, and the mess was pretty basic. Wipe down all surfaces, clean the floor (who the fuck spilled soup and just let it dry there?), empty the fridge of all the healthy fruit and vegetables – intended for scheduled meals – that were starting to rot, and fill up bags with rubbish. Easy as pie.

Next was the bedroom. Which was on a whole other level of gross.

"Your mother makes you do this?" Noct asked dubiously as they sorted the stuff on the floor into laundry, trash, recyclables, and crap that needed to be put away.

"Astrals forbid she came home to my house looking like this," Prompto said, returning a pile of books to the bookcase. "Ena's wicked houseproud. She'd _cry_, and then heads would roll." He hopped quickly to avoid a pile of stiff used tissues. "_Dude_. Gross."

"_You're_ gross," Noctis muttered, but he dragged the trash bag over and gingerly tossed them out.

All told, they were finished in under two hours, and Prompto felt like he'd done a good thing. As a loyal Lucian citizen, he'd served the nation by making sure the Prince had sparkling clean counters and floors. And for all his grumbling, Noct seemed proud of how nice he'd made his place look. He told Prompto to hang around until Gladio came by to escort him to some diplomatic banquet thing at the Citadel, saying they could drop him off at the station.

Prompto let himself be bribed. It was worth it. He got to see how Noct stood straighter and looked shyly proud when Gladio – elegant as promised in a tailored suit – stopped short just inside the doorway and said, "Holy shit, Iggy's going to flip when he sees this place."

"It wasn't hard," Noct said, with a diffident shrug. "Prompto helped."

"_Helped_," Gladio repeated, raising an eyebrow at Prompto. "He did a great job. Helping."

"Whatever," Noct said. "Let's go, I'm starving."

*

"One moment," Ignis said to Noct, who threw himself into the backseat with a mumbled greeting. He'd already yanked his phone out and was turning it on, and didn't seem to pay attention as Ignis slid out of the driver's seat. Prompto hadn't seen him since Thursday and he looked a lot better, his eyes sharp and alert, and his nose not running all over the place. Even his hair looked healthier, his bangs spiked straight up in front, back to his usual cutting-edge style. "Prompto. May I speak with you a moment?"

"Sure." Prompto had been taking a step back, ready to head off; he paused, and his bag swung around to smack hard into his hip. Fortunately, Ignis was busy opening the front passenger door, so probably he hadn't been observed being clumsy. Good. Ignis took out a fancy-looking paper shopping bag, sleek and muted red. He held it out, and Prompto accepted it in confusion. "Whoa." Prompto hefted the bag. "What's this?"

"A token of my appreciation, for all you did for me and for Noct this past week."

Prompto peered into the bag. Something in a box, cake maybe. "Dude. You don't have to. That's just what friends do for each other, right?"

Ignis seemed taken aback by that, eyeing Prompto like he wasn't sure he'd heard right, the pause growing way too awkward before he murmured, "Indeed."

Suddenly Prompto's heart was about a hundred times heavier than the bag in his arms. He made himself keep smiling, even though now it felt glued on and fake. So… he guessed Ignis didn't consider him a friend. Which made sense. Prompto was _Noct's_ friend, and it wasn't like he and Ignis hung out that much, or sent each other that many dumb memes, or had anything in common, maybe.

"You're going to make me late to training," Noct interrupted from the back seat, where he was tapping away at a game and apparently eavesdropping. He looked up for a second to give Prompto a cryptic wink. "I'm not going to become the next good influence if you step down, Specs."

"As if you could," Ignis replied, apparently on automatic, without even glancing at Noct, who stuck his tongue out at Ignis' back. "But I'm afraid Noct is right."

"You two crazy kids have fun," Prompto said. He waved and then headed off, glad for the flow of students toward the station that he could merge into to hide. A moment later, his phone dinged with a message.

_He doesn't have a lot of friends_, Noct wrote. _Like. Did anyone even send 'get better soon' messages? Not his uncle for sure, Gladio's pissed about that. Plus I guess Gladio and I might kind of/sort of take him for granted. He means well. Save me a cookie, that shop's famous._

_K_, Prompto replied, just to be a dick, but he felt... well, relieved that maybe Ignis didn't hate him, but then kind of sad on Ignis' behalf. He was a nice guy, but he buried his personality and his dumb jokes and his snarky temper under layers of bland. Noct complained a lot that Ignis used to be more fun when they were kids, getting up to trouble in the Citadel and teaching him about cool stuff, but now he was like everyone else, wanting Noct to be more like a prince and a responsible adult.

Ignis was two years older, though, and Prompto got the impression that he'd already been beaten down with the responsibility hammer, to the point where he was literally working himself sick. Prompto got it – he knew the political situation sucked and the King was running out of options. Hell, his parents were out there right now making sure the Wall was strong enough to withstand direct attack, and they were dead certain that that attack would come soon. The Niflheim Emperor was old and wanted to crush Lucis in his lifetime, apparently.

Prompto didn't blame anyone for not knowing what to do; he froze up thinking about it himself. But he had to believe that little things counted. Seventeen years ago, two refugees fleeing for the Crown City stumbled over a dying father desperate to get his baby to safety; Prompto's parents helped him, of course, and they'd kept the baby. _You do what you can_, his dad always said; his parents might not approve of the monarchy or the government, but they believed in protecting as many people as they could _one brick at a time_.

Prompto passed it on by taking care of stray cats and looking for the lost pets on flyers, and that had led to Lady Lunafreya of Tenebrae asking him to be Noct's friend, and now he had - maybe - even Gladio and Ignis as friends, too.

Little things that led to bigger ones; starting out not even at level one but stuck in the tutorials for ages. But he was doing better at the game of his life, finally figuring out the controls and boosting his stamina (thanks, Gladio). Recruiting companions. Patiently putting out metaphorical bowls of milk for Noct's Advisor to raise their relationship stats. He might even – maybe – be getting good at it. He hoped.

*

The next time Prompto saw Ignis was by well-engineered accident, fueled by a hint from Gladio. Prompto still ran every morning, and if he woke up just a half-hour earlier and took a bus to a start point near the Bank of Insomnia headquarters he could cover part of Ignis' commute route (according to Gladio, who maybe just wanted him to run more, who knew; he was still pushing the marathon thing). Prompto did this as a concerned friend and not a stalker, of course.

His scheme paid off after four days. He was jogging in place at a light when he saw Ignis heading toward him, communing with a can of coffee. Ignis looked tired, which was unexpected, and Prompto hoped he wasn't overdoing things, trying to make up for time he'd lost to being sick.

Though this was Ignis after all. He probably was bringing work home and staying up late, sitting at the huge wooden desk in his room with his back turned to the bed resolutely.

"Hey," Prompto called, keeping his voice low because it wasn't even six yet. He full-arm waved, and after a moment Ignis looked up. The light changed, and Prompto dashed across, grinning. "Hey! Morning."

"Prompto," Ignis said, somewhat blankly. "Hello."

He adjusted his glasses, and suddenly Prompto wondered if maybe Ignis didn't want to see him. Plus he'd run full-out the past two kilometers to get here, and there wasn't a part of him that wasn't sweaty and gross. Ignis looked perfect like always, as if he'd just walked out of one of those fancy men's magazines; Prompto was in his ancient gym shorts. Together, they were kind of a living illustration of the "do and don't"s of fashion.

"I'm never quite awake until I've had my coffee," Ignis said, raising the can in explanation. "My apologies if I seem..." He let his voice trail off and nodded up the road, in question. Prompto took that for an invitation and started walking with him, back the way he'd come. "What are you doing here?"

"Gladio suggested changing up my exercise routine," Prompto said, which wasn't even a lie, just misleading. "Have you seen his legs? I figure he knows what he's talking about." Ignis made a polite noise of agreement and took a sip of coffee. So of course that was when Prompto's lack of brain-to-mouth filter kicked in. "Are you gay?" He nearly tripped over his own feet; would have, if not for Ignis grabbing his elbow in an iron grip as Prompto's idiot mouth dug him in deeper: "Or bi. Or otherwise appreciative of Gladio's... everything. You know. He's _epic_. Kill me now?"

Ignis let him go, but his hand hovered for a moment, as if he wasn't sure he could trust Prompto not to collapse like a shaky house of cards.

"One of the peculiarities of Citadel life is that - unlike traditional high society - it harbors very few prejudices based on sexuality or identity," Ignis said after Prompto had managed a few shaky paces all on his own. He sounded kindly and amused, like he was _taking Prompto in under his wing_, which was the opposite of what was supposed to be happening. "I assure you, Noct, Gladio, and I would only be honored if you chose to come out to us."

Prompto tipped his head back and looked up at the clear blue of the sky, the wispy watercolor clouds, pretty as a picture. He should probably have stayed in bed, he realized now. Why was it that whenever he intended to get Ignis to talk about himself he ended up blabbing out his whole life, uncensored?

Ignis' hand clamped back around his arm, fingers digging in like a warning before releasing him. "Eyes forward, please. Are you always so distractable while running?"

"There's a reason I don't let myself bring a camera most days," Prompto admitted, jerking his chin down and sneaking a glance at Ignis out of the corner of his eye. He seemed more amused than annoyed. "Did I just out myself?"

Ignis raised and lowered his shoulders in an economical shrug. "Perhaps. You were rather incoherent, so I could undoubtedly have misunderstood what you meant."

"You said it was cool with you, though." At least, that was the impression Prompto had gotten.

"Far be it from me to deny anyone the aesthetic joys of Gladio's thighs."

Prompto grinned. "He could crack someone's skull like a nut."

"Desist," Ignis said. "I need to work with the man on a daily basis. And I myself am more than capable of inflicting any number of painful injuries, you know. Fair warning."

The rational part of Prompto's brain gibbered, but his libido thought that was a massive turn-on, and Prompto's dick would have utterly betrayed him if he hadn't jerked off right after his alarm beeped, to wake himself up. And great, now he was walking along, side by side with Ignis, whose own legs were poetry in elegant trousers, thinking about sex, and that was _not_ a good think.

Attempting to get himself under control, he managed to bump right into Ignis, who swatted him away with an injunction to _behave_.

"Yeah, not one of my top ten skills, dude," Prompto admitted. "You wouldn't really eviscerate me right here in front of the tourist board office, anyway. Right?"

"I'd be more likely to choose a subtle revenge, like talking with you long enough that you need to really dash to be on time for school," Ignis agreed, with a smile that made Prompto's heart melt right up until the words sank in.

He looked at his watch and yelped, shooting Ignis a dirty look even as he said goodbye, and took off.

He got caught at the light again, and imagined he heard Ignis laughing at him.

*

So apparently this was Prompto's social life now. He _ran into_ Ignis a couple of mornings a week and consistently failed to pump him for personal information like he always planned. He met up with Gladio and Noct on the weekends sometimes when he didn't have work, to get workout advice. Sometimes Gladio's kid sister came along, and Gladio let her sit on his shoulders while he did push-ups. Noct tried that with Prompto once, and neither of them could manage to lift even a centimeter off the ground.

He still saw Noct at school, and they kept each other awake in class and shared textbooks and gym clothes. Noct had known Prompto was bi for ages – courtesy Prompto's eternal failure to not blab when he was nervous – and he one day decided Prompto had a crush on Gladio, based solely on how much he gushed about his muscles.

"I'm not shallow," Prompto protested, when Noct raised the topic over lunch one day. They were eating outside on the lawn, in the dappled shade of a tree donated by the graduating class twenty years previous. "Plus if I was interested in Gladio, I couldn't be chill around him. I'd walk into walls and fall over my own feet."

"Okay," Noct said dubiously. "I guess that's good. Ignis doesn't want you getting your heart broken."

As soon as the words registered, Prompto went so red he felt like he'd been dipped in a volcano, and he had to hide his face so Noct couldn't snap a picture of him catching on fire like a human torch.

"_Oh my god_," he said into his knees, and then repeated the words for effect. "You told Ignis? Why did you tell Ignis? Let him go back to peacefully worrying about your malnutrition. It's his one true calling."

"No way," Noct said, and tried to get Prompto into a headlock, which made him topple over and nearly stab himself in the face with his thermos bottle. "He tries to manage _everything_."

Normally, Prompto'd attempt to defend Ignis – after all, part of his job was literally to be Noct's manager – but he was feeling betrayed on all sides. Just thinking that Ignis had taken Noct's word that Prompto had a pathetic crush, and then assumed that naturally he didn't stand a chance with Gladio... damn, this was going to make him so awkward around everyone, and he couldn't even avoid them properly, since he'd been officially roped into joining Gladio's team for the marathon. No more innocent perving on his ass. He hoped Noct hadn't said anything to anyone besides Ignis. Like especially Gladio.

He asked Noct that, the fabric of his trousers muffling the question.

"Who else would I tell?" Noct said, and then a moment later answered his own question. "I'll make sure Iggy doesn't bring it up with anyone."

"There is literally nothing _to_ bring up," Prompto said in despair. "You made it all up, just because I maybe took a few appreciative ass photos. Also, I'm running away to join one of those secret orders of Fulgarian monks."

"How cool would that be." Noct sounded a bit too relaxed, like he was trying to coax a cat out of hiding so he could pet it. Prompto wasn't going to be that easily wooed out of his annoyance, though. "They were spies, right? And knew all about poisons and pressure points for knocking people out."

"I think that's made up for the movies," Prompto pointed out. He nearly suggested Noct ask Gladio, but that would cut too close to his still-smarting mortification. He did uncurl, though, and drank some of his tea, watching the sky through the leaf canopy above. "And video games." He could feel his friendship stats with Ignis and Gladio starting to slip, after all the years of effort he'd put in.

Noct deployed his emotional intelligence and gamely changed the topic to Assassin's Creed Solheim II, which was slated for release just before solstice. Prompto wasn't as huge a fanboy as Noct was – _he'd_ never destroyed a pair of curtains to make a hooded cloak, just saying – but he was still interested in the latest leaks and gossip, and willing to spend the rest of their break arguing that the best game in the series so far was War of the Gods, and Noct was just plain wrong for thinking it was Starfall. No way.

Noct was wrong about everything today.

When the warning bell signalled the end of break, Noct was stiff and clumsy getting up, so Prompto gave him a hand to haul him to his feet. He recognized from Noct's grimace and the way he rolled his shoulders back that he'd probably been pummeled in training again yesterday. Prompto had seen him warp a couple of times and it looked cool, but Noct hinted darkly that the process of learning meant falling on his ass a lot.

Noct was a goofball, and Prompto didn't want to stay angry at him. He took a deep breath and said, "If you ever want to talk to me about people you like or, like, people I like, you know you can just – ask me, right?" He busied himself grabbing his lunch stuff, so he didn't need to look at Noct's face.

Noct sighed. Prompto grabbed his stuff, too, and shoved it at him as they headed back to their classroom. "I thought... it'd be nice. I just meant to ask Ignis if Gladio liked guys, but he thought I was asking for myself, and I panicked." 

"Didn't dating Shields used to be a King thing?" Prompto asked. There'd been a historical drama about it, anyway, and he thought it'd been based on fact.

Noct elbowed him, and Prompto yelped and swore.

"If the King's gay, there's a marriage-plus-one tradition," Noct said. "But he still needs to have kids. And right now I'm most likely to be married off to Iris, so banging her brother would be – ugh." He made a face.

"Ugh," Prompto agreed, though that was also his horror at imagining Noct being forced to marry _anyone_.

"You're a free agent, though," Noct went on. "I just thought... how cool would that be, to be able to choose."

"Well," Prompto said, not sure what to do with that confession. "We're both giant nerds, so we're probably doomed anyway."

Above them, with exquisite timing, the chime starting period five began to ring out a different kind of doom.

"_Shit,_" Noct said, and they joined the rest of the late students making a mad dash to be in their seats by the time it stopped ringing.

*

Prompto changed up his morning route to avoid Ignis for a week before he had the courage to face him again. He figured that was about the limit of any excuse he could come up with, and beyond that he'd have to be honest. He hoped Noct had cleared things up with Ignis and there'd be no awkwardness, but he was prepared.

"Hey," he said, giving Ignis a wave. He'd gotten to the National Bank early, and was just scrubbing the sweat off his face with his tanktop when Ignis rounded the corner. He gulped down some water – Ignis always reminded him to hydrate – and hoped he didn't look too gross.

Ignis looked both pleased to see him and wary, taking a swig of coffee himself, as if he needed to be more awake than he was. "I owe you an apology," he said, first thing, as he approached.

Prompto blinked. "No you don't," he said, frowning. "Not your fault Noct's brain goes to weird places."

"Very kind of you to say so," Ignis said, like a robot that had been programmed with stilted human language. But then he added, almost on a sigh, "I may have raised him wrong."

"Dude," Prompto said in reprimand. He didn't want to get into the weirdness of Ignis and Noct's relationship. Talk about people sticking their noses in where they didn't belong. "Anyway," he went on, changing the subject at top speed, "my mom and dad dropped by, that's why I missed a few days." He shrugged. "I wasn't avoiding you."

Ignis was too polite to call him out on making origami out of the truth, but he did say, "So how are your parents?" in a way that sounded vaguely accusatory.

"They have opinions about the tax law revisions," Prompto said. "And the proposed budget, and immigration. But we went shopping at the Galahdan market and made good food to argue over. Mostly they come home to do laundry and sleep," he added. "We're not very exciting. Except for the food. Probably more exotic than what you're used to."

"I'd be interested to find out," Ignis said immediately. That was when Prompto realized he'd basically issued a challenge, and triggered Ignis' competitive streak.

He had regrets, but also good manners, so he shrugged and said anytime Ignis was free, he could come over and try the curry of death. Or his mom's fish soup of death. He took advantage of the time – _late again!_ – to run away and leave the offer dangling, and spent the rest of his run wondering how he always got himself into such trouble.

It was the talking, he decided. If he just kept his mouth shut, he wouldn't end up accidentally inviting the advisor to the future king over to his very ordinary suburban house to burn his taste buds off.

He sent a text to his mom asking for a few recipes just in case, and when he got home from school he checked the kitchen cabinets to see if he needed to buy anything. All of the spices were kept in recycled glass jars, with the contents written in marker on tape on the lids, and the freezer had similarly-marked packs of meat in stiff paper. No fish. He'd have to buy some. He started a list, and then realized that he should probably check with Ignis and see if he'd been serious.

_If you weren't just being polite this morning,_ he wrote, _are you free Fri or Sat? If you were just being polite, A++ politeness, very sincere!_ He sent that off and then worried it sounded sarcastic, so he attacked a couple pictures of cute cats he'd seen the other day, and sent the link to a video of a dancing chocobo.

Then he worried that he was flooding Ignis with too much random weirdness, and send Noct a plea to just have him dropped in a dark pit where he could embarrass himself all he liked with no witnesses.

Noct linked him to the same chocobo video – how was it possible that two people so vastly different could be such brain twins? It was uncanny.

_Ignis sent me that,_ Noct wrote a few seconds later. _I guess to make up for the thousands of reports he wants me to 'just be familiar with' or 'skim'. One of these days he's going to stab me._

_Nah,_ Prompto sent back, feeling flustered and weird, not sure if the chocobo thing was significant or not. _He wouldn't want to give you an easy way out._

_SO TRUE._ Noct attached an emoticon of a trolley car, probably a slip of his finger. If he was being cryptic, it went over Prompto's head, like so many other things. _What's up with you?_

Now Prompto felt weird for hassling both Ignis and Noct when they were working. He hoped Ignis wasn't sitting across the table from Noct, the frown lines between his eyes deepening as his blood pressure rose.

_I say the wrong things all the time,_ Prompto wrote. _I'm going to go take a bath and watch that video a hundred times._

_Glad to be of service!_ Noct sent.

Prompto turned his phone off and went to scrub the bathroom spotless while the bath heated.

Ignis' reply came late that night while Prompto was doing battle with his chemistry homework. He thanked him for the video and pictures, and said re the invitation, _Not this week, I'm afraid._

_Next week, awesome! F or S?_ Prompto sent back, brain on autopilot and unable to take a hint or an easy way out. Argentums never give up, his mom always told him (usually while segueing from how she'd arrived in Insomnia with nothing to how he needed to take on more family responsibilities), but apparently that included times when giving up would be for the best. He turned to a new page in his notebook and started planning a menu.

It actually took close to a month for Ignis to get a Saturday evening free, but that worked out for the best. Prompto had enough time to practice his mom's Sebaean fish stew recipe a few times. His first attempt was like murder in a bowl, way too spicy and full of bones; the third was not only edible, but tasty in a sinus-clearing way.

Ignis showed up in his car, and tried not to look too proud as Prompto walked around it in the carport, admiring. When they went inside, Ignis was – no surprise – a super-polite houseguest. He brought a _host gift_, which Prompto thought was a thing that only happened in old movies, not that he was going to turn down another wrapped box of cookies from what was apparently Insomnia's swankest bakery. He offered to help in the kitchen, despite having apparently _dressed up_: his trousers had pinstripes, and his dress shirt was black and embroidered in black, which had the pretty cool effect of making his eyes look even greener and keener. Even if Prompto had owned an apron he wouldn't have trusted it to keep Ignis pretty, so Prompto gave him the loaf of bread to slice, over at the table, away from potential disaster.

After a bit of conversation and a discreet look around, Ignis asked where, exactly, his parents were from.

"I always assume you guys know everything about me," Prompto admitted, fishing the pepperleaf out of the stewpot. "Like, if someone's friends with the prince, they get investigated, right, to make sure they're not a spy or a delinquent or whatever." He didn't want to check his wrist to make sure that his tattoo was covered, but he knew the longer he put it off the twitchier he'd get. He glanced down: wristband snug, and under that the gauze and bandage was in place, like always. Phew.

"That's true," Ignis admitted, giving Prompto a measuring sideways glance. "However, the report is made to the King's adviser. It's hardly known information." He set the knife down – the bread was now neatly arranged on the platter in perfectly even rounds. "I know your parents work in defense, because you so informed me, and that they're immigrants."

"They're from Modesingham, near where the late Queen's family was from," Prompto said, turning the gas off and going to get their bowls from the table. He pronounced the town's name properly – with a silent _odes_ – the way his parents did, even though Insomnians thought it had four syllables. "Before the MTs came in to wipe it off the map. You know I'm adopted?"

"There's a picture in the front hall," Ignis said dryly. "I had my suspicions."

Point. Genetics could be freaky, but two black-haired, brown-eyed people didn't usually have blond freckly kids.

Prompto filled the bowls, and passed them over the counter so Ignis could set them on the table. "My birth father made them swear to bring me to Insomnia before he died, and when we got here the city was hiring every able-bodied refugee to work on the walls. Then they got neck-deep in union organization – equal pay, workers' rights, the ongoing battle for decent benefits... Romantic, right? What do you want to drink? There's water, tea, and juice." He didn't have wine; he should have asked his parents to buy him some. He bet Ignis drank wine. But maybe not the boxed kind.

"Water for now, and perhaps tea after the meal," Ignis suggested. Prompto filled two glasses at the tap and plonked them down just north of the knives – he'd shaken Noct down about what a well-set table looked like. Etiquette books (so unused their spines had cracked when opened) with diagrams had been deployed. Prompto had had a good bit of cultural frisson with Noct, since he had trouble imagining anyone needing (or owning) quite so many spoons as rich people seemed to, but they reached the mutual decision that it wasn't worth worrying about.

Prompto made an expansive gesture to indicate they should sit and eat, and dropped into his own chair by way of illustration. Ignis did as well, murmuring thanks for the food and wondering with a hint of trepidation whether the broth was supposed to be quite so red.

"Mom says the only flavors in Modesingham were hot and hotter." Prompto took a sip, and gave Ignis an encouraging thumbs up. "I don't remember any of it, I was a baby. Probably the milk wasn't spicy?" He shrugged, and forced himself not to fidget with his wristband. Ignis didn't know about that, and knock on wood, he'd never find out.

"Childhood memories are odd like that, aren't they?" Ignis sounded warm and detached, so Prompto was utterly unprepared for him to continue, "I think my first are from when I was already living with my uncle. And then when I met Noct, of course."

"Huh." Prompto bet Ignis was adorable as a kid. "How'd they die? Do you have any pictures?" Ignis paused and _looked_ at him, which made Prompto suddenly recall how he felt when he got asked those questions. He'd had a phase of taking photos of random blond strangers, once, just so he could pretend he had parents he didn't need to explain. "Nevermind, you know you can just tell me to shut up, right? Like. Please do. Any time."

"I simply forgot that you have no reason to know old gossip." Ignis took a piece of bread, topped it with a square of the fake Modesingham red cheese the local supermarket sold, and took a bite, apparently thinking. Prompto hopped up and went to top their water glasses up, to do something with his nervous energy. "My parents married young – my mother was about your age, actually – I was born half a year later, and they divorced when I was two. They've since both remarried, and have families of their own." He said this lightly, as if it had nothing to do with him. Maybe it didn't. Which was...

"Weird," Prompto said, sitting back down. He tapped his fingers on the table. The fact that Ignis trusted him enough that he could tell him was both warming and a crushing responsibility. "_Whoa_. Can you imagine having a two-year-old kid at your literal age? I had a dog once," he added, sweeping aside all reservations in a fit of camaraderie. "For two days. It was Lady Lunafreya's, only it got hurt and lost trying to find Noct. And I still freaked the hell out about the responsibility."

Ignis nodded. Noct must have told him the story; he didn't seem surprised. "Yet from what I've seen, you've no problems in that department." He started on his stew, eating with more enthusiasm once he'd recovered from the shock of the first mouthful. (Prompto nudged the tissue box over to his side of the table as subtly as he could.) "Thank you for imparting your knowledge of housekeeping to Noct, by the way. He seems to be intent on keeping it up."

"I have an advantage," Prompto admitted. "He knows I laugh when he expects to be picked up after. It triggers the part of him that wants to one-up me. And it helps that sometimes he thinks – not on purpose, but still – that he should naturally be better at stuff because he's who he is. Even normal stuff, like playing video games. When he realizes he's being a jerk – or when I tell him – he tends to straighten out quick."

Ignis set down his spoon and cocked an eyebrow at Prompto. "So you're saying Gladio and I have never stood a chance at keeping him in line."

Prompto waved this off with the piece of bread he was working on. "You know you do that just fine. Just, we plebes have our uses, too." He eyed Ignis' now-empty glass. "Do you need more water?"

Ignis blinked firmly and the tears Prompto had spotted at the corners of his eyes disappeared, which was a very neat trick. Maybe they taught that in Never Show Weakness 101 – don't let foreign food make you cry. But he said _yes, please_, and didn't seem to mind that this made Prompto grin.

After that, the conversation wandered all over the place, from polite inquiries about school to what Prompto planned to do after graduation to photography to star-gazing (Ignis' hobby of choice; apparently he knew most of the stars by name and reputation and was terribly offended by astral fortune-telling, which he said was all lies).

"Fiery temper, fiery name, sign of Ifrit amirite?" Prompto said, cocking a finger at Ignis in the sign of the zinger.

Ignis stared at him for a long moment in which the room temperature felt like it dropped, and then glanced pointedly at his his phone. "My. Look at the time." He pushed his chair back.

"Kidding, I kid," Prompto said hastily. "At least wait for tea and cake."

Ignis eyed him, face still not betraying anything but giving off an ineffably smug feeling of _I win_. "Well. If you insist."

He ended up staying another hour, and left with two new games installed on his phone. Prompto walked him out to his car and then – way too late – was blindsided by the sudden choking realization that this might be a date. Did Ignis think this was a date? Did he want to date Ignis? And then when his brain supplied a big _yes_ he panicked, wondering if that was on the table, of if it even could be.

Or was this just Prompto's old friend self-sabotage dropping in? Visions of ruining a very nice friendship with unwanted goodnight kisses flashed before his eyes. Ignis was drop-dead handsome and self-assured and owned a car that probably cost more than Prompto's whole house. It would be stupid to even think of getting a crush on him, and even stupider to act on it. As if Ignis would look twice at Noct's commoner high school friend. He didn't even know if Ignis liked guys; there'd never been reciprocity in the conversation when Prompto came out, damn it.

Prompto settled for a quick one-armed hug and two (non-stinging) slaps on the back, which Ignis seemed to have no idea what to do with. Which answered _that_ question. Prompto flashed a bright grin and said, "See you around," and waved until the car rounded the corner, heading for the highway. Back uptown, where rich people did whatever rich people do, with glamour and elegance, and Ignis had his painfully tidy apartment stuffed with rich-people hand-me-downs and his creepy Oracle painting. Whatever. Prompto had dishes to wash. If he could also drown his memories of how soft Ignis' shirt had been and how broad and strong his back had been under it, that would be super.

But because having a for-real crush would be beyond awkward and terrible, naturally it took root and flourished, quickly eclipsing any passing thoughts about Gladio (thanks, Noct), his math teacher, Gladio's Kingsglaive buddies, and the girl who ran the school photography club. Prompto forced himself not to take too many pictures of Ignis doing typical Ignis things and not to stare moonily at him when there wasn't a lens to hide behind. Still, he couldn't help digging out his faithful old running shorts from junior high, which were loose enough but way too short for his legs now. If Ignis didn't want to see what he had to offer, he didn't need to look, right?

Prompto was so doomed. His only comfort was that Noct seemed not to notice anything, thank all the sleeping gods.


	4. Chapter 4

Prompto kicked his feet into his sneakers and banged out of the house, feeling like a stereotypical stupid teenager in the movies. Which aggravated him even more because he was out of school, working at his part-time job and thinking of joining the Crownsguard. His finishing time in the solstice marathon – whcih Ena and Tarrix hadn't watched – had been good enough Gladio said it'd definitely give him an edge if he applied.

He'd been taking care of his parents' house in their absence since he was eleven or so – he was an adult, he was pretty sure, in all the ways that counted. So how come his parents could reduce him to yelling and stomping when they hadn't even been home for half an hour?

He didn't even really know why they'd set him off so badly. They'd been arguing again that he'd be betraying his roots in the Crownsguard, and Tarrix had brought up that he was old enough to get the tattoo on his wrist covered over legally now, like Prompto didn't know that. He'd been in elementary school when he'd realized to his horror that he'd been barcoded like any item for sale in the shops. Ena said the Nifs must have done it, and that was why his birth dad had fled, trying to get to Insomnia. They'd hurt his kid; of course he ran.

The older Prompto got, though, the more he wondered what the code _meant_. Would the Nifs have sold him... into slavery or something? Did they do that? Or was it just a creepier form of national ID? He hated being marked, but part of him was desperate to know what it said about him: his real name? Where he'd come from? Was his missing birth mom alive, and was having this mark the only way she'd recognize him?

So. Maybe someday he'd allow someone to see the tattoo just long enough to hide it under a skull or some flowers or something. But _until then_, his body was his own and he didn't need to be nagged or pressured. Wristbands had worked for him for eighteen years so far, and if his parents were bothered, it wasn't his problem. Except that when he tried to explain that, the words of course came out wrong and make everything worse.

He knew other people who were adopted. Hell, _Ignis_ was adopted, and Prompto couldn't see him throwing a sulky fit at his uncle to save his life, even though from everything he heard his uncle was a horrible person. (Ignis would do it to save Noct's life, sure – he'd do just about anything for Noct, no matter how out of character or humiliating.) So he was pretty certain this had nothing to do with being adopted. Just with being _him_.

Deep down, he could feel his drive to please his parents decaying into apathy, and it scared him. He didn't want to stop loving them, but when they fought he felt sad and rootless. Being an Argentum had always been something he was proud of; he didn't want to lose that. After all, he had nothing else.

He didn't want to be alone with his thoughts as he made his way along the river path and up past his old elementary school and through the shopping arcade. Shutters were already being pulled down over shopfronts, and he realized he should have brought a jacket. The wind had a bite to it.

He turned left past the animal hospital and into the pocket park on the corner, just big enough for a slide, two benches, and some flowers in cement boxes. He threw himself onto a bench and looked out at the view of the city lights. There was the Citadel, and there was Noct's apartment building. The entertainment district was bright, full of restaurants and theaters and clubs; the bedtowns outside of the ring road were darker. Good kids across the city were being tucked into bed by their parents, lights out and see you in the morning.

Prompto's parents had never really been into doing things like that. They went to bed really early when they were home – being used to it, because their work started at daybreak – and Prompto had usually gone to bed at the same time because the house was scary when he was up alone. Some nights when they weren't there, he'd crawled into bed clutching the paper with the neighbor's phone number on it _for emergencies_. Course, he hadn't had his own phone back then, so it'd been more magical thinking than useful.

That wasn't an issue now, though. Prompto dug his phone out of his pocket and opened his address book. He thought about calling Noct, but that would just be opening a can of worms, and Noct had an unholy fondness for worms. Noct would want to do something, but he sure shouldn't be running around the city at night. Gladio would come swooping down on them and knock their heads together.

So maybe he should call Gladio, who could give good advice based on his experience as a big brother. Except... Prompto would have to explain the whole thing with his parents, how they probably didn't really want him and how he was a perpetual disappointment, never the son they'd hoped he would turn into. He didn't know if Gladio would understand, especially since Clarus seemed like a decent enough father, except for not letting Gladio go to high school, even though he'd wanted to. He seemed to be over it now, though; he and Iris didn't seem that messed up to Prompto.

He found himself staring at Ignis' number. On the one hand, Ignis would understand. On the other, his crush was still going strong, and exposing his problems like this would be mortifying. But he needed to talk to _someone_, or he'd spontaneously combust from the heat of his whirring thoughts.

Ignis answered on the third ring, by which time Prompto had shoved to his feet and was walking, purposefully but directionless, away from the station (away from home).

"Prompto," he said, warm and efficient, and then added, "Good evening. Is something wrong?"

Prompto shrugged. He should have practiced a few sentences in his head before dialing. Now here he was, with Ignis on the line, and tongue-tied. Great. "I think I'm running away from home. I don't know. I just wanted to tell someone."

"Are you safe?" Ignis asked. "Where are you?"

Despite everything, all the yelling and accusations and heartbreak, that made Prompto smile. Ignis took care of the people he cared about, and the affirmation that Prompto was included in that elite group was almost as good as a hug. "I'm walking off the mad. No plan. I just... kind of had to leave."

He could hear soft muffled sounds, like Ignis was moving around now, distracted from whatever he'd been doing. Prompto wondered what that was. He probably hadn't been flopped on the sofa in his velour pajamas watching TV – he couldn't imagine Ignis flopping. He was always so deliberate with his movements. Maybe Ignis did needlepoint; Prompto thought that'd be cool. Lots of little cross-stitched skulls and cars. More likely he poured himself a glass of wine and perused whatever paperwork security allowed him to take home.

(If he _was_ home. Prompto looked across the city toward the Citadel again, but there was no way he could tell if the lights were on in Ignis' office from here.)

"You're welcome to come here," Ignis said. He sounded sincere, and Prompto thought fondly of the nights he'd spent on that hellishly comfortable velvet sofa. He wasn't sure where he was going to sleep. If he walked around until five, he could just head to work and let himself in a couple hours early, take a nap on a pile of Meteor back issues in the back room. Sounded like a plan. "Why don't I pick you up?"

And just like that Prompto realized Ignis really meant it, and he had to bite his lip hard to keep all his feelings in. How come... how come someone who'd only known him a handful of years, who was Noct's friend and from a whole different world than Prompto, was being so _nice_ to him, when his parents couldn't manage one evening without clashing over one ting or another?

"You don't need to do that," Prompto said, tipping his head back to look up at the glitter of the protective wall that domed the city. He thought about where he'd come from, whether he'd have fit in there any better, if not for the war.

"I'm putting my shoes on now," Ignis said. There was an odd bump, and then a jangle that sounded like keys. "I'll ring back if the signal drops in the elevator, as it so often does. But it'd help if you'd give me a location."

Prompto sucked in a breath, held it, blew it out again. Pictured train lines and highways, Insomnia as familiar to him as if it really were home, and turned back to the train station. "I can be outside Westmarket in fifteen minutes. Which works better for you, the central or north exit?"

"Central," Ignis said after a brief pause. "I'll see you then."

"Yeah." Prompto hung up. His feet hit the ground faster and faster, until he was jogging, like he couldn't wait to get out of this place.

Or get to where Ignis was.

One of those two.

He only had to wait a couple minutes once he got there, leaning against the railing by the station-front drop off. At this hour, most of the people around were office workers finally heading home and some high school kids clustering in front of the convenience store. He waved when he saw Ignis' car pull into the rotary, all sleek and expensive. As a photographer he loved the aesthetics of it, and his mechanical side really hoped someday Ignis would let him behind the wheel. In his head, he could imagine what his parents would say, disdainful of the waste and blah-blah aristocracy, blah-blah inequality. But it really was a gorgeous car.

He slid into the passenger seat with a _thank you_ that came out sounding sullen, and made a face. "No, really. You're saving me, here. I'm just still kind of messed up in my head."

"I assume you got in an argument," Ignis said. "Would it help to talk about it?" His tone was carefully neutral, and Prompto winced. He wasn't supposed to be like this. He was the _fun_ person.

But here Ignis was, dragged out of his pajamas in the middle of the night. Prompto owed him some kind of explanation. "Same thing as always." He couldn't explain about the tattoo, but that was just a new angle on tired old topics. "Stuff like how can I be friends with Noct when his dad started the fight that killed my real parents. Why would I want to throw my life away in the Crownsguard." Out of the corner of his eye he saw Ignis stiffen in shock at the vehemence of his words, and Prompto scrubbed his hands through his hair, all keyed up and needing to do anything but dump his problems on Ignis, who'd only ever been kind and polite and gorgeous, everything Prompto'd ever wanted. And now he was getting to see all the dirty laundry, spilling out. "Could we – I don't know – just drive around for a bit? And... not talk about my family? Even though I'm being weird. They'll be gone in a day or two anyway."

"I know just the place," Ignis said.

Prompto slumped in mute relief.

When they hit the ring road, Ignis asked him to put music on. Prompto protested that he was terrified of touching anything in the car, but Ignis just shrugged like that was no problem of his and handed Prompto his phone, open to the music app.

Prompto could recognize that this was a blatant diversion tactic – digital catnip – but he didn't care. He was thirsty as always for any scraps of information about Ignis, and he built a playlist quickly, amused by how different their musical tastes were. Ignis only had complete albums, undoubtedly all bought and downloaded legally. Nothing stood out as a surprise. A third of his collection was instrumental, which Prompto was largely unfamiliar with, and another third was inoffensive popular music, laced with a few genuine pernicious earworms that Prompto could only assume were used to drive Noct crazy when Noct was doing the same back to Ignis. Everything else was an eclectic jumble, and trying to deduce just why Ignis chose to carry some of it around was soothing.

Ignis merged onto 5 heading east, speeding a bit now that they were out of city traffic, and Prompto suddenly realized, with a rush of warmth, that he was holding Ignis' whole _life_ in his hand. And Ignis had given it to him like he had absolute faith that Prompto wouldn't send Noct joke texts or wreck his game scores or fuck with his schedule. (Maybe he had all those apps locked, but still, it was a nice thought, that he was trusted.)

Prompto had grown up listening to his parents' collection of protest songs, and even if they were embarrassing and nothing he'd ever sing at karaoke with Noct – did Noct even know there were angry songs about pulling back the Wall? – they still provided the BGM to his thoughts more often than not. He wondered if Ignis was the same. Except not with folk music, obviously.

"Where are we going?" he asked, finally pulling himself out of the ball he'd been curled into and looking out the window. He couldn't see much except darkness and streetlights flashing by, but they were out past the suburbs now, the road narrowed to two lanes and not elevated any more as it cut through farmland. He'd be in for a long walk home if Ignis dumped him out here, but he couldn't see that happening. He felt safe, and that realization made him wish he could reach over and take Ignis' hand, or lean on his shoulder, or lie down with his head in his lap. Dangerous to do while driving, of course, especially when he had no right to those intimacies at all. But still...

"There's a municipal park with hiking trails, another ten minutes or so up the road. It wouldn't be safe to climb to the top at night, of course, but the views are fairly spectacular."

That sounded... really nice. Prompto tipped his head back so he could watch Ignis drive. "Some place you used to go with your uncle? Or on school trips?"

"I've visited with Noct a few times," Ignis said, smoothly evasive.

Prompto was struck by the sudden thought that maybe Ignis was used to getting called up in the middle of the night to deal with kids angsting about their parents. The thought made his restless anger stir, because he didn't want to be babysat.

Though he supposed Noct didn't, either. And it wasn't Ignis' fault that being designated child-minder had been baked into his job. He'd started work at seven, he'd said, and even Prompto's parents would be forced to admit that that went against all the labor laws on the books.

He wondered if Ignis had ever been interested in finding out more about his rights as a worker under Lucian law, or if he thought of what he did as more of a calling. Or maybe just his identity. That would be just so... ugh. So Ignis. So frustrating and yet perfect.

"Not Gladio?" Prompto asked idly, brain still mostly occupied with wanting to reach over the divider and _touch_. "He's into outdoor stuff. He's taking me and Noct fishing, I guess, the next bank holiday weekend." Prompto still felt like he'd been mind-controlled into that, somehow: first, Noct got him to play a dumb fishing game, then he was showing him his lures (what?) and talking about worms (gross), and then suddenly a massive tattooed arm was around his shoulders and the joys of waking up to fish before dawn were being described like some kind of heroic epic and... Prompto had been weak. What even happened?

"Better you than me," Ignis said, darkly, which made Prompto curious. He asked if Ignis had ever been suckered into a fishing expedition, and the resulting story was both tragic and hilarious, involving a rainstorm and a washed-away tent, and took long enough to tell that it continued all the way from them from leaving the car in the parking area, to halfway up the trail.

All Prompto had to contribute was the occasional _oh my god_ or _no wait, he did what_ or an apology for laughing so hard. Ignis was a good storyteller, but Prompto got his usual feeling that he didn't have much opportunity to just vent all his pent-up frustration. Maybe he thought of being frustrated as a failing. After all, Noct had to come first, in everything, all the time.

Ignis got to the point where Noct slipped during his cast and the lure got stuck in Ignis' hair – which had, he said, been fused solid from a terrible combination of hair gel and mud – and Gladio had decided to just cut it out.

"A very large chunk of hair," Ignis said. "With his hunting knife. I was of course furious, but what was done was done. That is why, however, those two will need to grovel before I ever embark on such an undertaking again."

Prompto had to laugh at how vindictive Ignis sounded; he'd never want to have that anger turned on himself, but he figured Gladio and Noct could take it. "Where?" he asked, reaching out. Ignis had produced a small clip-on flashlight that was illuminating the trail ahead of them, and his fingers found Ignis' hair easily enough. "Here?" He poked the side, right behind his ear, then a spot higher. "Here?"

Ignis swatted his hand away without even deigning to glance in his direction, and Prompto stumbled on the uneven ground, going down with a bitten-off yelp. So much for looking cool, he mourned, wiping the dirt from his scraped-up palms on his trousers. Not that he supposed Ignis thought of him as cool, or ever would.

But Ignis turned back immediately with a contrite apology for his action – which Prompto assured him was unnecessary, his own clumsiness was the culprit – and held out a hand to pull Prompto up.

He didn't let go as they resumed the climb, either. Prompto went hot, then cold, then hot again as he tried to figure out what it _meant_.

Cause one thing he knew about Ignis was, he did everything deliberately.

The trail hit a broad level clearing, with three picnic tables arranged in a half circle. Ignis pulled Prompto towards one of them and instructed him to stretch out on top and look up. As soon as he was settled, the light was turned off, and a moment later Ignis joined him.

"It'll take a few minutes for our eyes to adjust," Ignis said. His voice sounded much louder in the darkness, or maybe that was because he was speaking almost right into Prompto's ear. "Even here the light pollution's quite bad – don't expect to see the Astral bridge or anything other than very brightest of stars."

"The great autumn triangle?" Prompto dimly recalled that from his elementary school science class. "Glacian, Infernian, and Eye of Leviathan?"

Ignis hummed. "Given the hour, I expect we might even see Leviathan's Tail rise – each of the three stars is named for a queen of legend." Prompto made a questioning noise, and Ignis very kindly explained to him who they were and why they each got a star in the sky. It was weird, like being introduced to a celebrity. By the time the last one – _Regina Mediae_ – appeared over the treetops, Prompto was totally psyched to see her, pointing to the faint glimmer out with a feeling of accomplishment.

"It's nice here," he said, in the lull after that excitement. "Romantic."

And then he bit his lip to keep from saying anything else stupid. He didn't want Ignis to be offended, or laugh, or do _anything_ that might tarnish the pleasant bubble of fantasy that his crush lived in.

But Ignis didn't mock him, or agree and then name the person he'd rather be here with, and after a moment Prompto felt the light brush of Ignis' finger against the side of his hand. Prompto grabbed for it and caught his whole hand instead, slotting their fingers together on instinct alone, like he was drowning or falling.

He lay there for a very long moment staring up at the stars while Ignis filled his head with their names and histories, and tried to catch up, because he felt like he was missing something huge. Here he was, in this romantic setting with Ignis, who was holding his hand – or letting Prompto hold his hand – quite possibly on purpose. Definitely. Ignis didn't do anything unintentionally, and at any rate he hadn't pulled away.

Prompto's heart beat like it was going to explode. He turned his head, saying a mental farewell to his crush because one way or another it was doomed now. Ignis was looking back at him, the darkness hiding his features but the glint of his glasses giving him away.

Then Ignis curled to the side, leaning over Prompto for a moment before lowering his head and _kissing_ him.

Prompto was not stupid enough to not kiss back. His free hand went around Ignis' waist, to keep him there in case he tried to get away before Prompto was _done_ kissing him. Which might take a while. He'd never kissed anyone before, but he'd seen movies. It wasn't that hard to figure out. Plus Ignis seemed to be on the same page. He wasn't as effortlessly good at kissing as he was at driving or fighting. Enthusiastic and talented, _yes_, but still figuring out how it worked, just like Prompto was.

In even his wildest fantasies he hadn't ever imagined a more perfect first kiss.

Ignis curled his fingers into Prompto's hair, and suddenly Prompto's narrow focus on kissing widened out and he realized he could _touch_, too. Probably.

He wanted to touch Ignis _everywhere_, but started with his shoulders. The clothes Ignis wore tended to minimize just how broad his shoulders were, and how much powerful muscle he had from Crownsguard training. He was _solid_, and Prompto tugged him closer, wanting to be pressed into the weight and strength of him. His hand slid down Ignis' spine and made him jolt, and Ignis shifted, setting one knee between Prompto's and sparking a near-uncontrollable desire to pull Ignis down so he could rub off on Prompto's thigh. Prompto _wanted_, and let his fingers slide along the place where Ignis' shirt was untucking from his trousers. He imagined putting both his hands there, only on gorgeous bared skin, and had to stop kissing to get his breath back.

Ignis put his forehead to Prompto's shoulder and said, muffled by fabric, "You _do_ like me." He was breathing hard, too, and Prompto wondered what he'd been thinking. What he wanted. He sounded... not smug, but more relieved, which was confusing.

"Duh," Prompto said. He'd been shadowed by his crush for so long he just assumed everyone else was at least somewhat aware of its existence; he'd been grateful Ignis was too polite to say anything. "You're perfect and amazing and have a terrible sense of humor, of course I do."

"I thought," Ignis started, and then shook his head. "I'd assumed you simply wanted to be friends. With which I was fine," he added. "I quite enjoy having you as a friend, though I still have no idea why, considering..." He didn't finish that thought, but Prompto could fill in the blanks. They came from totally different worlds.

Prompto considered for a nanosecond mentioning the mental RPG of his life and how he'd been working to raise his friendship stats with Ignis for _years_ now, but nope. That'd be his secret.

"We have a lot in common," Prompto offered. Differences, sure, but also nothing insurmountable. "We both like your car. We're both up past bedtime."

"Only one of us is ridiculous, however," Ignis said, and kissed him again before he could protest.

Kissing led to more making out led to Prompto getting both his hands under Ignis' shirt and Ignis shifting, pressing closer, and brushing right over Prompto's dick accidentally. Prompto yelped and grabbed at him with both hands and felt his face go red, because how embarrassing was that? But Ignis did it again, a slow roll of his hips that made Prompto have to squeeze his eyes shut and remember to breathe.

"We should," Ignis said, dragging in a shuddering breath and cupping Prompto's burning cheek with his hand, "go somewhere. Not here."

"People eat here," Prompto's mouth said, one-hundred-percent disengaged from his brain. And then, "Where?"

He didn't want to think about what would happen if he went back to his house. Especially with Ignis in tow.

"My apartment," Ignis suggested. He sounded cautious, like he didn't want to cause offence, but all Prompto could think of was sex and how much he wanted that. Every imaginable kind that he'd heard of or read about or seen in porn, and all of Ignis' naked skin.

He had to reply somehow, but it took a moment to choke out a, "Yes," and then – not wanting Ignis to think he was being rude and greedy – "Please?"

"Right." Ignis gave him one more quick kiss and then rolled off the table, turning his back to Prompto to straighten his clothes and, so quickly Prompto nearly missed it, adjust himself in his pants.

The giddiness from knowing that he'd turned Ignis on – _him_, with just his newfound kissing prowess – had him float-stumbling all the way down to the car. He probably would have walked face-first into a tree if not for Ignis' hand in his, guiding him away from disaster.

Ignis didn't offer music on the drive back, but Prompto didn't need it. He hitched one leg under himself so he could sit sideways – careful to keep his shoe off the leather seat – and watched Ignis drive. When they reached the end of the winding country road and got on the highway, Prompto had stopped freaking out enough that he could reach out and touch. Nothing too distracting – he hoped – he didn't want to shatter the fragile miracle that had happened.

Was happening. Right now. Present tense.

He figured that Ignis was too well-trained a driver to swerve off the road, so he slid his fingers into his hair, learning the shape of his skull, sliding his hand down to curl at the back of Ignis' neck and hold him like he was precious. Because he was. Ignis drove faster, the speedometer creeping up over the legal limit and staying there, but Prompto wasn't complaining.

When they parked at Ignis' place, Prompto only got one good kiss in before Ignis was ushering him firmly out of the car and guiding him to the elevator with a hand to the small of his back.

There was a camera blinking in the corner of the elevator, and Prompto stood against the wall opposite Ignis, trying to look innocent. Failed, most likely, because Ignis went right back to escorting him as soon as the doors opened, down the breezeway to his front door; then inside and shoes off. They were alone and unobserved, and Ignis kissed him, there in the front hall, until his thoughts unclouded enough for him to pull back and ask, breathless and earnest, if Prompto would like anything to drink.

Prompto ran a finger over Ignis' kiss-reddened lower lip and thought fondly about his manners – so thoughtful! But so inappropriate to the occasion! He was amused enough to say, inanely, "Just you", and follow up with another kiss.

He gave Ignis a nudge toward the bedroom, hinting instead of asking outright, and was close enough to see Ignis swallow hard at the implication before leading the way back.

The door was ajar, and the bedside lamp had been left on. Ignis' pajamas – the coeurl-patterned ones – were folded over the back of his chair, and the covers were turned down.

Prompto felt guilt for all of three seconds for dragging Ignis out of bed, but Ignis just adjusted his glasses in embarrassment and apologized for the mess. "Thank you for calling me," he added, and reached out to brush his fingers against Prompto's.

"My pleasure," Prompto said vacantly, realizing somehow they were holding hands again and he didn't know when that had become an automatic thing. He took a breath, and then another, and then admitted, "I've never done this before." He'd catch on quickly – he hoped. He didn't want Ignis to be disappointed.

But Ignis just gave him a reassuring smile and said, "I imagine we'll figure it out." That was an incredible relief. Prompto was all for helping Ignis with his sexual exploration. Ignis nodded at the bed. "Would you like to sit down?"

Prompto said yes, of course; it was good to test all possible kissing locations and positions. Just for future reference. Kissing on the edge of the bed was good because Ignis had to lean down to adjust for their heights, so if Prompto leaned back... and Ignis followed... then they ended up just like on the picnic bench, with Prompto stretched out under Ignis, hands on his back and in his hair; but the bed was softer and warmer and smelled like Ignis. Prompto could stay there forever...

He could _also_ deploy a little of his self-defense training and roll them over. The wall was kind of in the way – Ignis' bed was a narrow single, but that was fine, it was _intimate_ – but Prompto liked the view from the top, of Ignis under him, narrow hips framed by his own knees, hair a mess on the pillow.

He touched the rim of Ignis' glasses. "Can I take these off?" When Ignis assented, Prompto slid them off carefully and leaned up to put them on the window ledge. Buoyed by that success and achingly aware of how sexy Ignis was, he ran a finger down the buttons at the front of Ignis' shirt. "What about this?"

Silently, Ignis began undoing those buttons, and Prompto let his fingers follow in their wake, pushing the fabric aside and marveling at the slow reveal of Ignis' chest. So toned, so gorgeous. He was going to kiss every centimeter that he saw, he decided; claim all of Ignis for his own.

But then Ignis fixed him with a sharp look and gave a tug to Prompto's own shirt hem. "You as well."

Prompto wasn't shy; he liked how he looked and still took mirror selfies once a week to record his progress from running and workouts. He pulled his shirt over his head and dropped it on the floor, only after the fact wondering if he looked eager or too un-sexy. He actually had no idea how normal people who weren't porn stars had sex; it wasn't like he could ask his parents, and the only other person who might know was Gladio. And asking him would give everything away, when he wanted to keep this – keep Ignis like this – to himself.

He leaned in for a kiss, because he needed that contact again, and Ignis put his arms around his back, pulling him down until they were chest to chest. Which was amazing enough that he had to wiggle against Ignis, rubbing against him like a cat begging for attention. He could feel Ignis' nipples, or thought he could, and as hard as he was trying not to jab Ignis with his dick he worried he was being... rude, or something.

"Can we -- ?" Ignis asked, lips moving against Prompto's as he slipped one hand down and pushed suggestively at the waistband of Prompto's jeans. "Would you be more comfortable?"

"Are you _un_comfortable?" Prompto pushed himself up on both hands, which whoa, tactical error: his hips pressed forward, and he could feel Ignis' dick with his dick, right there, and Ignis' hand clenched at him hard, like he wanted to make him to do that again. Ignis shuddered when he did, his breath catching broken in his throat, and Prompto _wanted_ \-- all of him, everything, and definitely pants-off.

Persuading his body to stop rocking into Ignis' hardness was nearly impossible, but he managed to exert a little self-control and slipped off the bed entirely. The room felt cooler, but he realized after a moment that was because he was so desperate he was breaking out in a sweat. Ignis didn't even bother getting out of bed, he just raised his hips and shoved everything down as far as he could and then kicked both trousers and underpants to the bottom of the bed.

So okay then. Naked it was.

By force of locker room habit he made his eyes look anywhere except for Ignis' dick, and he was stepping out of his own pants when his gaze skidded to Ignis' face and – Ignis was looking. His lips were parted like he'd been about to say something but forgot what it was, and he was staring right at Prompto's dick, trying to focus his eyes hard enough that Prompto could see a frown line.

"You can touch," he said. It was probably a dumb thing to say, but as he got back on the bed – gingerly, becuase without clothes he wasn't sure what the boundaries were anymore, if there were boundaries – Ignis reached out and ran a reverent finger along his dick, up along the side to circle the head, which was already slick with anticipation. Prompto shivered head to toe, back arching like someone'd run a finger down his spine, his whole body electrified and confused at the same time. His dick understood what touching was and liked being touched but this was... leveled up. He squeezed his eyes shut and breathed through the sensation.

"Sorry," Ignis said, and his hand was gone so fast Prompto felt a chill of air displacing.

He opened his eyes just enough to locate Ignis' mouth so he could kiss him. "No," he said. "What, no, I want – " and he slid his leg over Ignis' so their knees were pressed together, and kissed him again "this – this, you, everything."

Ignis shifted under him, rolling his hips up, and Prompto pressed down instinctually to meet him. Ignis made a muffled noise, part moan part shout, as their dicks slid right against each other as smoothly as if they'd done it on purpose. Prompto liked Ignis being noisy, it made his toes curl with pleasure, so he rocked against Ignis again.

Ignis grabbed him, one hand at the back of his neck and the other on his ass, fingertips digging in and encouraging a rough rhythm. The sensation was dizzying, and Prompto could feel his body ramping up to orgasm, even though he wanted to keep touching Ignis forever.

"Can we switch places?" Ignis asked. His voice was low and rough from breathing hard, and his hair was sweat-damp and Prompto would say yes to whatever he wanted, so it was a good thing he wanted more of this. More sex. Yes please.

If left to his own devices Prompto would probably have launched himself off the mattress, all clumsiness and nerves, but Ignis was graceful and strong and shockingly good at manhandling. He somehow managed to sweep Prompto along with him as he rolled, and Prompto ended up with his head on the pillow and Ignis grinning down at him like a coeurl with its prey.

That was cool, Prompto liked the idea of being eaten, Ignis could have all of him. He dragged his feet up along Ignis' legs until he could brace them on the mattress for leverage, and tried out the potential for this new position. Ignis was doing the same, but also nudging Prompto's head back and trailing bites down his neck in a way that made him squirm like all the places that should be ticklish had been rewired to his dick somehow. Prompto needed more stimulation to deal with this, so he licked his palm as wet and slick as he could and then shoved his hand between them to grab as much of both dicks as he could.

Ignis' teeth in his shoulder clamped down _hard_, and Prompto froze, wondering if he shouldn't have done that. Now that he thought about it, hardly anyone ever apologized in porn, but that had to be unrealistic.

"Please," Ignis said, and his hips jerked, and he sounded like he was in pain. "More?"

The good kind of pain, maybe? Fuck if Prompto knew, but he slid his palm down, figuring out his grip, and then up, and then he kind of got the hang of how to jerk two people off at once. He needed bigger hands, he needed to see the way Ignis' dick looked next to his own, he really wanted to maybe lick Ignis' dick, kiss it, suck on it. Maybe let Ignis do that to him.

_One step at a time_, he thought. Today... two dicks was definitely better than one dick, so he'd take his time and pace himself. Savor the moment. Watch the way Ignis' shoulders tightened and rolled, feel the movement travel down his spine and end in a convulsive thrust of his hips, fucking into Prompto's grip like he couldn't stop himself. Prompto was so, so close, panting and babbling out every thought that went through his head, and then Ignis raised up just enough to reach between them and join hands. With his longer fingers linked through Prompto's, he picked the pace up, tension coiling from him to Prompto and back again like they were in a race, surging toward the goal.

Ignis came first, head dropping so his drawn-out groan was made against Prompto's overheated skin, the sexiest thing he'd ever heard in his life. Come spilled everywhere, and the slick of it between Prompto's fingers made his hand fly as he arched up into Ignis, his vision whiting out with pleasure that shot up his spine and sent sparks along all his nerves. He felt _amazing_; he needed to do that again, right now, and maybe never stop.

"You'd tire eventually," Ignis said, voice bright with amusement, but when Prompto opened his mouth to protest that he would _not_, Ignis kissed him.

Prompto let himself get swept away by the sheer delight of being here, with Ignis, and sharing this, and it didn't even matter that they were both sweaty and covered in come. Prompto let his non-sticky hand wander, across Ignis' broad back and – daringly – down to the firm curves of his ass, holding him and kissing him and drowsing a little in the afterglow, but still totally up to do that again.

"We should wash up," Ignis said, though, and made Prompto get out of bed. His shower was just the right size for one person, but Prompto insisted they share anyway. Ignis was half-hard from all the kissing, so it was pretty easy to push him up against the wall and get him off again, and then he returned the favor. Prompto was buffeted by both bliss and drowsiness, his eyes falling shut all on their own as Ignis shampooed his hair for him and then kicked him out to towel the water off in a daze.

Prompto'd taken his wristband off but left the gauze bandage on; he unwrapped the wet mess of it now and slid the wristband on quickly. Ignis had brushed his fingers over the gauze questioningly in the shower and Prompto had said _no, don't_ in instinctual horror. So Ignis didn't, he'd just nodded and moved on to touch other places. Prompto adored him for that.

Ignis insisted on changing the sheets before they got into bed, and had a moment when his good manners surfaced, inappropriate and hilarious, as he offered to sleep on the sofa becuase the bed was small. Prompto was wearing borrowed shorts and a t-shirt that smelled so much like Ignis that he was a bit high just from breathing, and he said he didn't care, he was small, Ignis wouldn't even notice he was there.

Ignis just raised an eyebrow in incredulity, but scooted over to make room anyway.

It was very convenient in the morning, when they both woke up hard. Prompto thought about all of his solo morning wanks and decided he liked the two-person version better.

Ignis made a rushed breakfast, just enough toast that the coffee didn't go directly to his bloodstream. He looked soft and touchable with his bedhead and pajamas, and he kept touching Prompto, brushing his elbow with his hand or touching his knee while they were eating to get his attention – unnecessary, Prompto thought. Ignis had his total attention... though he wasn't really listening to what Ignis said. Ignis' eyes kept revealing different colors in the early morning light, and he needed to catalogue them all.

"I hate to rush you," Ignis said, and his hand disappeared from Prompto's hip to check the time on his phone, "but I need to leave for work in twenty minutes, and I'll have to drive there directly."

"Okay," Prompto said agreeably, before he realized that Ignis was actually apologizing for not being able to drop him off because he was running late. _Ha,_ he thought, smug. _I did that._ "I can run home from here, no problem."

Ignis frowned.

"I've got money for the train," Prompto said, but the frown didn't clear. "It's cool. My parents just don't get that I had to grow up a lot without them around. They can't tell me what to do now when they never did before." He sighed and picked at his toast. "It's their fault anyway, for always telling me that Argentums never give up. _No surrender_. What did they think would happen when there was a roomful of us and all with different opinions? Whatever. Even if they're still angry, they'll be gone in a few days anyway."

Ignis had his schedule open and was scrolling through the day's events, a mass of color blocks that were occasionally so dense that they overlapped. "Do call me if you need anything."

Prompto leaned into him. "I will definitely do that." He kissed Ignis on the cheek. "Can I watch you do your hair?"

"No," Ignis said, getting up and going to leave his dishes in the sink with a disgruntled look.

As soon as he disappeared to sequester himself in the bathroom and become all clothed and beautiful, Prompto did the dishes real quick and put them away, and then snuck into Ignis' room to hop into his clothes. They'd somehow picked up an Ignis-y scent – expensive cologne and washing powder and leather from the car – which was awesome. Ignis' room had acquired a maybe less cool smell of sex and sweat, and Prompto cracked the window open before wandering back into the living room.

From her frame, Oracle Sylva stared at him inquisitively. Prompto gave her a thumbs-up, and then made himself check his phone to see if his parents had sent any messages. (No, but he'd told them he was old enough to not need hassling about his life choices, so he figured maybe they'd listened to him for once. Wouldn't that be nice.)

(Wouldn't they blow a gasket when they found out about Ignis.)

He went to go look out the window to not think about that for a while, and debated taking a picture and sending it to Noct, asking him to guess where he was. But what if Noct guessed right?

When Ignis emerged, Prompto shoved his hands in his pockets to keep from touching, even though he was super tempted to run his hands down the clean pressed lines of Ignis' shirt and trousers and test to see how gel-stiff his hair really was. He reminded himself that he knew what Ignis looked like under his clothes now, and rocked up on his toes, trying to channel the thrill of energy that gave him.

"I'll walk you down," he said, because that was a thing people did, right? Tried to get in as much time together as possible? He didn't try to take Ignis' hand, though: it seemed weighty – risky – in the light of day. But in the elevator he asked, "Are we telling anyone? _Can_ you? Is this under wraps or what?"

He felt bad for asking immediately, because Ignis' face went kind of blank and shifty; not like he was thinking, but like he was trying to figure out how to deliver bad news so it didn't hurt.

"It's cool," Prompto said.

"It's _not_." Ignis pressed his lips together and sighed. "I'm... no one knows about me aside from my uncle."

Prompto crossed his arms. "Wait. He didn't kick you out for being gay, did he?"

"I left," Ignis corrected. "He wasn't exactly pleased to have invested in me for nothing."

"Oooh." There were layers and _layers_ hidden in those words; even Prompto's parents wouldn't have gone there. Prompto might not have grown up how they wanted, but they never played the _shouldn't have taken you in_ card. Prompto reached over and rubbed a hand at the back of Ignis' shoulder. "Well. That's horrible."

Ignis looked taken aback, like what, did he think Prompto was going to think that was acceptable? But the elevator reached the parking level, and they got out. Prompto thought the conversation was done, but when they reached the car, Ignis told him to get in. He could drop him off two blocks north, nearest the subway station.

"Thanks," Prompto said. He guessed that would still make Ignis late, but arguing about it would take even more time.

In the car, Ignis picked up what he'd been saying earlier. "If it's amenable to you, could we wait before telling anyone? I never entertained the possibility, I don't know _how_."

"Sure." Prompto still didn't like how unhappy Ignis seemed, but he could work on that later. "I'll follow your lead. Can I call you my boyfriend, though, when we're together?" 

If he hadn't been looking at Ignis' profile, he'd have missed how his cheeks reddened at that. So adorable. "I'd like that."

"You can drop me here," Prompto said. Ignis pulled over unquestioningly, and Prompto kissed him. Kissed his boyfriend. Kissed _Ignis_. Whoa.

He was all floaty as he got out of the car, and sent Ignis off a mushy, emoticon-heavy message thanking him for the ride and wishing him a good day.

He got Ignis' reply just as he was getting off at his local station – reception in the tunnels was always dire. Ignis was just as sappy but used bigger words, and Prompto grinned all the way home.

His parents didn't apologize for the previous day's fight, but his dad had left Prompto's portion of breakfast out and they both wanted to know where he'd gone and that he'd been safe.

"I was at a friend's," Prompto said. It wasn't even a lie. He tried not to glow or fidget or blurt out that sex was awesome.

Ena looked pained. "Not the Prince, I hope."

If Prompto could have just _one_ wish, it'd be for them to drop their intense anti-monarchy stance, at least around him. He never knew what to say; they were right, some of the stuff King Regis did had been terrible. People had died, like his birth parents, and the lands outside the wall were lost. There was no Modesingham left to even return to. But even if he was a weak king, Prompto didn't know that a parliament elected by the people would have been able to stand up to Niflheim any better.

Plus, he'd seen Noct use magic. Maybe the skills needed to be a good head of government weren't hereditary, but it was a fact that Noct and the King had something normal people didn't, and the gods had to have given that power to the Lucis Caelums for a reason, right? And the King _did_ share his magic with as many people as he could. Noct was always low-key nervous slash angry about how his dad was burning himself out and aging too quickly, needing to use a cane now to get around because of the pain.

"Another friend," he said, and then sighed. "Can we not do this all over again? Tell me about what's happening on the wall or something."

"We'll talk, you eat," Tarrix said, pouring cups of strong tea from the kettle on the stove and carrying them out. "Growing kids need food." He sounded oddly sure of that factoid, despite having given Prompto five hundred yen for dinner with no oversight for years. "What time do you have work?"

"I'm good, I got time," Prompto said. He took a bite of his eggs. Despite having eating earlier, he was ravenous. Probably all that sex was a good workout. He should definitely have lots more sex and find out. He did try to pay attention to what his parents were saying about Insomnia's security, coworkers who were dangerous idiots, and the Kingsglaive fending off Nif attacks, but he was distracted, thinking of all the things he couldn't wait to try with Ignis.

(Who was his boyfriend now? _Holy shit_.)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Lir's artwork can be found at their Twitter: https://twitter.com/princetlir/status/1197207270225891328 -- please share your love there!


	5. Chapter 5

The next year was hands down the weirdest of Prompto's life. Also, the busiest.

The nagging feeling he'd had – thanks, mom and dad – of being too laid-back and unwilling to commit to a cause peaked after a couple of weeks of the wall being under siege. _They don't want to actually break through_, his mom messaged him, dead on her feet from lack of sleep but still at her post. _They're just testing for weaknesses. When they come for real, they'll be unstoppable._

Prompto's first, cowardly thought was that his parents should run again. They'd left Modesingham on foot, carrying only their most important possessions, and if they'd made it good in Insomnia they could do so again somewhere else. Except there was nowhere else to run: only Insomnia wasn't Imperial territory, and the thought made his heart twist in his chest, shame burning into anger. King Regis' decisions – or King Mors', before him – might have backed them all into a corner, but everyone had a responsibility to stand their ground. Not just those who were born to that duty, like Noct and Gladio and Ignis; even the commonest of plebes.

He told Noct he wanted to join the Crownsguard, and if he couldn't then he'd apply to the Kingsglaive. Noct was not as chill about this as Prompto'd hoped. He asked for his reasons, grilling him extensively in a way that made him seem like a whole other person. Prompto hadn't understood fully, he realized, just who the Prince actually was. Until then he'd always just known Noct.

But the experience was good, because the next person he had to talk to was Cor "The Immortal" Leonis, who'd have scared Prompto to tears if he hadn't been inoculated by Noct first. According to Cor, not many people were rushing to sign up, which was why the Glaive recruited so heavily from new immigrants.

"That seems weird," Prompto said cautiously from his uncomfortable chair in the meeting room. He was trying to straighten his shoulders and spine and give the impression that he always had great posture, but the chair was undermining him. "There's been increasing activity along the wall for a while now."

"The general populace trusts that the King's magic will keep them safe," Cor said, each word heavy and portentous. "You're better informed than most young people your age."

_Shit._ Prompto swallowed and hoped he hadn't just got his parents into trouble. He shrugged – then regretted the gesture as too casual – and returned to what he hoped was his main sales point. "Coming to Insomnia saved my life. I got a free education at national schools and health care and stuff because of being a war orphan. So I was privileged to go to school with Prince Noctis, and yeah, maybe I'm more aware of things because of that?"

Also, dating Noct's advisor helped, but Prompto wasn't going to breathe a word about that. Ignis had said there wasn't a problem with Prompto applying, and they'd iron out complications, if any, later. Ignis was good at ironing, so that was reassuring.

"I'm not saying that I don't think the King can't protect his people, but it's unfair to expect him to do it alone. I'm a fast learner," he added.

Cor sent him home with a massive packet of paperwork, which... Prompto assumed meant he got the job. He snapped a picture of the envelope and sent it to Ignis, captioned _!?!?!?!?_

Ignis replied with a _!_ and showed up on Prompto's doorstep half an hour later with a fancy take-out box of red bean rice. "Congratulations," he said, very soberly, and Prompto dragged him upstairs to desecrate his childhood bedroom once again.

He'd bought a new bed in a fit of optimism when he'd first started dating Ignis (the old one had been getting too short for him, plus the frame was covered with chocobo stickers), and he considered it his best purchase that wasn't camera-related. Ignis didn't usually sleep over, but a lot could be done in a bed besides sleeping. Prompto had given his first blowjob there, and had gotten one right after. They'd been at Ignis' the first time Prompto fucked Ignis, and while Prompto was pretty sure Ignis had volunteered to go first because he assumed he wouldn't get off on it, he totally had. He'd come completely apart, writhing like he was possessed, and after he came he'd curled into Prompto like he wanted to be held, and fell asleep like that, without a shower or anything.

Prompto had lain awake for ages afterward, petting Ignis' hair and rubbing his back. He thought it was probably weird for him to feel protective when Ignis was taller and stronger and a legit badass, but he couldn't help himself.

And now he was going to ask Ignis to do him, and he was so full of nerves he was jittering. He trusted Ignis to take care of him, like he always did, but the idea of being that vulnerable was daunting. Still, anything once, right?

Ignis brought condoms and lube, even though Prompto had prepared his own stuff. Not a bad thing, though: if they wanted to, they could get very busy, many times over.

"Do you recall that time you invited me to your house for dinner?" Ignis shot Prompto a wry, embarrassed look as he started to undress, hanging his clothes up in Prompto's wardrobe. Prompto, in the middle of taking his shirt off, shrugged, nearly elbowing himself in the face. "I brought condoms then as well."

After a breathless shocked moment, Prompto burst out in laughter.

I didn't know!" Ignis said, in embarrassed exculpation. "You kept telling me your parents weren't home, and you cooked me dinner. It seemed..." He didn't finish the sentence, but Prompto could fill in the blank pretty well.

"You thought I was being subtle about trying to seduce you?"

"This was before I learned that you're physically incapable of being subtle," Ignis shot back. He sounded very snarky for someone wearing socks but no underwear.

"You liked me," Prompto said, smug, and watched Ignis' face redden as he got stuck between admitting it – which would be mortifyingly mushy – and denial, which would be cruel. "You should have just said, we could have been having amazing sex all along."

He crossed over to kiss Ignis back into a less self-conscious mood. Ignis ran his hands up and down Prompto's back, greedy and impatient, his dick growing hard where it rubbed against Prompto's skin. Prompto took a step backward, then another, which was all the space he had left in his room not covered by the bed. His knees bumped into the mattress and he let himself fall backwards, dragging Ignis with him in a tangle of arms and legs. Not his most seductive move, he decided, but effective anyway.

They had a bit of a tussle, as Prompto tried to push Ignis' socks off and Ignis kept being ticklish and squirming away. Prompto tried to pin him down and got flipped around, Ignis' fingers laced with his own to keep them from straying toward his overly-sensitive arches.

"Welp, this is definitely a compromising position," Prompto said, wriggling but not making a serious attempt to twist free. "So compromise me already."

"If I must," Ignis said, with a sigh, as if Noct had just demanded Cup Noodles for dinner or something.

"Hey," Prompto said, trying to pout and not grin. "There's a mood, here, don't ruin it."

"I would never," Ignis said, and reached for the lube. Prompto used the moment of distraction to yoink one of his socks off, and Ignis removed the other with a baleful glare that made Prompto shivery right down to his own toes. He kissed Ignis while waiting for the nerves to pass, which was a good plan, except Ignis figured him out and said – very seriously for someone with a hard-on – that they didn't need to do this today, if Prompto wasn't feeling up to it.

"Dude, I am totally up." Ignis gave him a judgmental look, and Prompto filched the glasses off his face and stuck them on the headboard shelf.

He had one second thought about sex – just one – when Ignis had his fingers in him and it felt weird and not sexy at all, but then Ignis found a spot that was wired directly to the pleasure center of his brain. Prompto'd thought the people who talked about seeing stars were using a metaphor, but nope, it was like staring at a sparkler while at the same time all the sparks were setting his nerves on fire, in a good way.

Ignis looked smug as Prompto tried to breathe through all the sparking, and then pulled his fingers out. Prompto felt weird all over again as Ignis raised his hips and pushed into him – he'd heard it was supposed to be the most intimate form of closeness, but he didn't feel joined so much as exposed, like Ignis would know everything about him after this. And he was high enough that he almost didn't care: as long as Ignis kept delivering that intense sparking pleasure, he was welcome to all of Prompto.

Which seemed to suit him fine. Once Ignis was in Prompto and fucking him, his mood shifted, becoming more intense and possessive, his eyes fierce.

"I don't want to lose you," he said, reaching down to cup Prompto's face with one hand.

Prompto shivered, trying to draw his brain back from a one-track thirst for _more_. "Won't happen," he promised, nuzzling into the warmth of Ignis' palm.

Ignis frowned like he wanted to argue, which – the time and place for that were not _now_.

"I promise," Prompto said, curling up so he could pull Ignis down and kiss him quiet.

Kissing distracted him again, and he rolled his hips up into Ignis' slow deep thrusts, wanting to pass the distraction on. He thought it worked, and then Ignis started jerking him off and Prompto gave up on thinking entirely, consumed by the need to come _right now_. When orgasm did hit him, like an entire fireworks display, he could feel himself clenching down around Ignis' dick inside him, and a wave of fondness and bliss went through him on the heels of pleasure, a surge of energy and goodwill and probably love, though he didn't let himself linger on that idea. He was just really, really happy.

Ignis came just a few hard strokes later, when Prompto was still twitching, or maybe because he was. It felt really strange when he pulled out – Prompto had just gotten used to having his dick there, and now it was gone – but after mopping up with tissues, Ignis wanted to make out some more and Prompto thought that was a great idea. Might as well have a bit of a rest and then some more sex. They wouldn't even need to get dressed.

Ignis insisted on showers and dinner before round three, though, and Prompto would have protested if he wasn't absolutely starving. He'd been too busy being anxious about the interview to eat lunch, and now his stomach was registering a formal protest.

While they were devouring the rice and an omelet that Ignis had whipped up, Ignis' phone buzzed on the table, and a moment later Prompto's played a Justice Monsters Five ringtone, so: Noct.

_So I heard from my DAD and not my best bro but_ Noct wrote, and then attached an animated sticker of a rabbit shouting "congratulations" and throwing confetti. 

Ignis had muttered an apology and was typing in something long and complex, with a frown line between his eyes. Prompto told him it was no biggie, and sent his own reply. _THANKS BRO, I just came home and freaked out, you know. Cause I am committed to guarding crowns, but also, on a scale of 1 to 10, how much does that worry you? Be honest._

Noct was silent for a moment, and then sent the meme of a woman mouthing _zero calories!_ at someone dressed as a sexy bottle of diet cola.

Prompto snorted, and Ignis looked at him in question. After a moment, Prompto showed him his screen.

Ignis smiled, but it looked forced. He tapped his own phone with a finger. "He wants to know where I am and if I can come over." 

Well, that was what happened when you kept secrets from people, Prompto supposed. They didn't realize that you might be off somewhere having a lot of sex. Plus Ignis and Noct still weren't getting along as comfortably as they used to. Prompto could see both sides a lot more clearly than he was comfortable with, considering he couldn't _do_ anything.

Noct wanted Ignis to be his friend and push back on a lot of the unnecessary bullshit that was traditional or expected of a prince – _They want me to attend three balls this season_, he'd griped just the past weekend. _The world is falling apart, and I'm supposed to be dancing while you're learning how to fight._ Ignis tried so hard to be that friend, but he got frustrated that Noct refused to see the bigger picture, and then they both said things they regretted.

In Prompto's opinion, if Noct just picked up the slack a little – small things, like cleaning his own apartment or spending a few hours greasing political wheels while waltzing – Ignis would be able to relax because he wouldn't always be eaten up by guilt because he felt bad for the restrictions Noct chafed at, or haunted by the need to abstain from indulgences that Noct wasn't allowed - holidays, university, dating Prompto openly. Ignis was _good_ at giving stuff up; his whole identity was tied up in his personal competence, and that included managing Noct. If only Noct knew how to give a little without giving all of himself.

Prompto knew that drove Gladio up the wall. Gladio probably kicked ass at fancy balls, in his gorgeous formalwear. He didn't make a secret of being frustrated that Noct didn't just suck it up and do what was expected of him, like he did, but he hadn't survived multiple assassination attempts as a kid, and he wasn't watching the magic drain his father like a vampire.

None of this was Prompto's problem to deal with in real life, though – at least not until his paperwork was turned in and he was officially a Crownsguard trainee. All he could do was small stuff. Like how when he was working out with Gladio (i.e., while Gladio was bullying him into _one more set, come on_), Prompto tried to help him see that Noct was dedicated and worked hard: maybe he didn't like dancing with rich people's daughters in hopes they'd support a bill in the Council or donate money or whatever, but he was committed to his part-time job and to the charity work he did with the children's hospital, and he trained all the time, in fighting and in magic. Plus, he was good now at keeping his apartment clean.

With Ignis, Prompto was still shocked that he'd managed to unlock a romance route in the RPG of his life, but he had to be careful not to let that spectacular success go to his head. Don't be selfish, think about long-term goals. It helped that he wasn't jealous of Noct at all. He wanted to spend more time with Ignis, sure, but not if it meant him not doing his duty to the Crown, or not being there for a friend who needed him. Iggy'd feel terrible about that, and Prompto just wanted him to be happy.

"If you've got to go," he said, keeping his tone cheery and matter-of-fact. When Ignis gave him a skeptical look, Prompto shrugged, and stretched his leg out under the table to hook their ankles together. "There's always tomorrow, or the day after, or whatever. I'm not going anywhere."

"You're a good person," Ignis said, with a faint smile that made him look almost sad about that. "But for what it's worth... I'm sorry."

Prompto got up and kissed him; kissing was a useful "get out of difficult conversations free" card. "You want to dry your hair before you go?"

Ignis sighed and tried to push his bangs back with his fingers, then gave up, patting his pockets and then heading for the front door. "It's probably good for him to know that he dragged me out of the shower – amongst other things – at this time of night."

"You guys have fun. No fighting."

"Will there be a reward if I keep my temper?" Ignis asked dryly, and most likely rhetorically, but Prompto promised that yes, he would be very rewarding of good behavior. "_Damn_ it," Ignis said, and then he was out the door and driving away.

Prompto found himself feeling far more amused than disappointed, and went upstairs to grab the sheets and toss them in the wash.

His Crownsguard training began officially at the start of the next month, which was barely enough time to tie up all the ends of his life. He had to give notice at the photography shop, which he felt bad about, especially when the old man gave him a sweet digital Lokton as a parting gift and told him to document the war for posterity. His parents went through the roof when he told them; _The Glaive are dying out here, you know_, Ena said, and Prompto snapped back that he doubted she was any safer out there on the Wall. He worked out his frustrations with Gladio, who insisted on giving him a head start on basic training. Lots of running, jumping, sit ups, pull ups, and stomach crunches. He hardly had any time to see Ignis, but when he did, the new muscle and stamina and flexibility really came in handy.

Training started with three weeks at a camp to the east of the city, near the waterfront. There were only ten in his class, and by the end of the month three of them had failed out. The lessons were intense; the Crownsguard didn't tap into the King's magic like the Glaive did, so they had to be that much better with their weapons. The Marshall wanted Prompto to learn to shoot, which was intimidating at first – all his skills came from video games – but he turned out to have an affinity for guns that was kind of unnerving. He could shoot them and take them apart and fix them up, as easily as if he'd been doing that all his life.

When he returned, he had more classes and training sessions as well as assigned duties at the Citadel. He felt conspicuous in the basic black trainee uniform, and his hair was just barely growing out of the buzzcut he'd been given. Noct was annoyed that he'd let his hair be chopped off – not like Prompto could have done anything about it, he made sure Noct knew – and warned Prompto he'd better not bow to him.

"Why do you want me to get fired?" Prompto asked, trying to give Noct puppy eyes as they changed into workout gear, getting ready for a joint training session before heading home. (Prompto was fairly sure that Noct had demanded these sessions be added to his schedule, and that Ignis had made it happen.) "I had to learn five different kinds of bows and, like, angles were measured, dude. Mathematical bowing."

Noct made a disgusted noise and pulled on a t-shirt that looked like it'd been ironed. Weird. Ignis must have been really bored with Prompto gone.

"I don't want you to become," Noct waved his arm around, like he was drawing a circle around the locker room, or the training halls, or maybe the whole Citadel, "part of all this bullshit. I don't want it to change you. I don't _care_ about all the trappings, you know that, right?"

Prompto knew he was going to lose Gladio approval points if this ever became public, but: "I know you don't – we're best friends, right? But no matter how much I love taking pictures, I wasn't nuts about keeping the shop clean or showing up at a junior high track meet at the asscrack of dawn. There's things you do for a paycheck because you need to pay rent and eat."

Noct frowned.

"Come on," Prompto said, pulling on his sweatpants and tying them tight. "You're friends with Gladio and Iggy, you should know how this works better than me."

"Paid friends," Noct said gloomily.

Prompto punched him in the arm. "Keep complaining and I'll stop trying to get Ignis to install King's Knight." He rolled his shoulders and stretched his arms, showing off his new definition. "Let's go, I think a little violence will do you good."

"Ignis missed you," Noct said, almost like an accusation. "When you were away."

_Shit._ "Duh," Prompto said, instead of blurting out the truth. "I'm a missable guy."

Those words came back to bite him on the ass repeatedly, with Noct taking great pleasure in bad jokes every time Prompto missed his mark. (It wasn't his fault! He wasn't used to fighting someone who could literally teleport around the hall.) After taking a short break, Noct got Prompto to start working on combos, which left them both drenched with sweat and barely able to stand when the group of Kingsglaive showed up for their scheduled time.

In the showers afterward, Noct blurted out, "Do you think Gladio and Ignis like me? As myself. Not the prince their lives have to revolve around."

Prompto did not want to have this conversation while naked with Noct. Or ever. But he couldn't let Noct down, not when he was miserable and wet, like a lost kitten in the rain.

"I know they do," he said. "Look – you guys fight about stuff, right? But it's because you care _so much_. All Ignis wants most days is for you to be happy. How many times has he made those little pie things for you? He'd stop if you said you got sick of pie, but you don't. And Gladio kind of wants you to be the kid brother who idolizes him, even though he'd never admit it. I don't know. What do you guys talk about when you're fishing?"

Noct rolled his eyes. "Not talking is the point of fishing."

Prompto threw a handful of water at him, that caught him smack in the chest and made him yelp and then whip water from the shower at Prompto's face. "If he didn't want to go hang out with you by some stupid muddy lake before sunup, he could arrange that in a heartbeat." He turned the water off and ducked his head forward, shaking the water out like a wet dog, hopefully hitting Noct. "Ask me if _I_ like you, go on."

"Nope," Noct said, getting out of the shower himself and grabbing a towel to wrap around his waist. "You'd be mean, I'd cry, my dad would toss you in the dungeons."

Which reminded him... "I _believed_ you that there were dungeons here." Prompto scraped hair out of his face so he could glare at Noct. "Monica laughed at me when I asked where they were."

"You just don't have high enough security clearance," Noct said airily. Then he pointed vaguely at Prompto's face. "Why do your eyebrows look better than mine?"

Prompto grinned wide. "Beauty tips from the Igster. There's a whole technique. I'll show you."

He felt a familiar ache of wanting to come clean with Noct; it'd be so much easier if he didn't have to lie all the time. Ignis had known he had training with Noct, so last night he'd been careful not to leave any suspicious marks, but anyone who knew Prompto would be able to see Ignis' influence all over the place. His eyebrows, his expanding vocabulary, the fact that he kind of knew what to do with multiple spoons and forks now.

Except, apparently, Gladio and Noct, who were too close to both of them to sense weirdness, apparently. Or maybe Noct had just taken their fight about Prompto's nonexistent crush on Gladio to heart, and assumed he could trust Prompto. Which smarted.

"Cool," Noct said, aggravatingly oblivious. "Dinner first, though."

"Yeah." Prompto had made Ignis pinkie-swear not to worry or feel guilty or anything if work got in the way, and Ignis had said that went both ways. But Prompto still felt a pang of selfishness when time that – theoretically – he might have spent with Ignis got devoured by responsibilities. Or date nights with Noct. He was ninety-nine percent sure that Ignis wouldn't even stagger out of his office until at least nine tonight, because he'd been put on a secret committee that was compiling a report for the Council. Prompto suspected it was some kind of plan for rationing food and water if the city was under siege, and possibly evacuation plans. Not that there was any place to go.

Ignis doubtless had to keep Noct updated on whatever it was, and Prompto couldn't see Noct being pleased at any of the options. When the Nifs came for real, Insomnia was fucked, and realistically, the royal family and the crystal would probably be sent off in a boat or something while the Crownsguard and the Glaive distracted the enemy until they couldn't any more.

It gave Prompto goosebumps when he thought too hard about it. And Ignis was starting to have nightmares, though that was probably at least half because of all the coffee and energy drinks he downed to get through each day. 

Prompto sent off a quick message while Noct was ordering food and letting his security detail know he was about to head off. He didn't get a reply until he was on Noct's sofa eating meat off skewers, and he had to scrub his fingers clean of grease before he could grab his phone.

_That's fine_, Ignis wrote. _I'm held up here, I'm afraid. Perhaps I'll see you tomorrow._

_I'm going to shape Noct's eyebrows now_, Prompto sent back, with emoticons for scissors and knives and sparkly hearts.

The reply was an instantaneous _Don't you dare_, so Prompto reluctantly muted his phone and went back to his meal.  
*

Work – for both of them – had been relentless for the past few weeks, so Prompto was psyched when Ignis asked if he could stop by around seven. He leaned in for a kiss, dizzy with want, as soon as Ignis was in the entranceway, and Ignis stopped him with a hand to his chest. Right over his heart, which dropped, right in time for Ignis to say, "I'd like to talk."

Prompto had seen movies, he knew that was never a good sign. He'd like to give Ignis the benefit of the doubt, but Ignis looked the way he had when he'd been so sick that time, pale and like he was thinking about throwing up.

"Sure," he said, even though he meant _nope, don't want to talk, ever, let's go make out and eat dinner and then maybe go upstairs and... anything but break up._

"It has been decided," Ignis said in his professional voice, smooth and emotionless, "that Noct will wed Lady Lunafreya. Very shortly. This is all... quite sudden. And I'm sure I needn't tell you that this decision is of utmost secrecy."

Prompto nodded, almost insulted that Ignis felt the need to say that. But he had bigger fish to worry about. "You know I won't spill the beans."

Ignis took a deep breath, the kind that made him pull his shoulders back, like he was being brave. "You'll need to pass your certifications within the next four weeks, accelerating the schedule for the completion of training. I have every confidence in your ability to do this. Noct wants you to accompany him – us – to the wedding in Altissia. We'll be traveling by car through occupied territory, and while this is ultimately at the behest and whim of the Empire, their protection should not be presumed."

And there came the big, obfuscating words. "Cor said I could probably pass by the end of the month anyway, and should get fitted for my real uniform." He was 99% sure Ignis hadn't come here so upset because he was worried about training, or even the Imperials. Something else had shaken him. "Is Noct going to stay in Altissia when he's married? I mean, Lady Lunafreya's the Oracle, she can't just up and move to Insomnia. Not like the Emperor would let her, anyway. So is this like... a permanent posting? To Altissia, or Tenebrae, or someplace?" Ignis looked taken aback, so fuck, Prompto was on the wrong track, but he tried to finish off his thought anyway. "Because I knew going into the Crownsguard I would be protecting Noct wherever he was. Might be fun, to see life outside these walls. It's where I came from, after all."

"We cannot continue to," Ignis' burst of words dried up as quickly as it had started; he swallowed and went on, "to indulge in a relationship that will interfere with our ability to perform our duties."

That was like being slammed to the floor by Gladio. All the air went out of Prompto's lungs, and he couldn't have responded even if he knew what to say. It was hard enough just to breathe.

Ignis realized with a start that his hand was still pressed to Prompto's chest – he could probably feel his struggle for air – and he yanked it back, breaking that connection between them.

"It's for the best," Ignis said, with a grim sort of heartiness, like when he tried to get Noct to eat vegetables, only a million times worse. "But I want you to know, I have treasured our time together. I know... this won't be easy, but I sincerely hope I don't lose your friendship as well."

"Let me take a raincheck on that." Prompto didn't even know what he was feeling right now, anger or grief or some kind of mutant hybrid of the two. Like everything that made him happy had been ripped away.

Ignis frowned, looking concerned. It was the first time this evening, Prompto thought bitterly, that he looked like _himself_, and not the Prince's Advisor. "Prompto – "

"Yeah, you don't get to _Prompto_ me right now." Prompto wrapped his arms around himself; he needed a hug, and it wasn't like anyone else here would give him one. "I think you should leave."

Ignis nodded, like he was _amenable to that suggestion_, and Prompto was proud of himself for not punching him. And a bit proud of his own pettiness for not saying anything as Ignis let himself out. Not goodbye, or see you tomorrow, and definitely not _love you_.

He'd wanted to say that, someday, and feeling that turn into _never_ was bitter.

Ignis wouldn't be Ignis without his devotion to Noct, and Prompto had always known that. So he was being dumb to imagine that if there ever had to be a choice made, Noct or Prompto, Ignis would try and find some way to not throw Prompto under the bus.

But he thought he was entitled to his anger that Ignis apparently had never considered looking for ways to have _both_ his service to Noct and a relationship – with Prompto or, well, with anyone. He guessed anyone seeking the roots of that wouldn't have to look further than parents who willingly turned their kid over to an unloving uncle, who then gave him the job of being a paid older-brother substitute. A professional good influence, right out of kindergarten, and all that mattered was Noct.

Not anyone or anything else.

Prompto realized that he'd been standing in the entranceway in his house slippers, just staring blankly at the door. He'd been half-waiting to hear the engine to Ignis' car purr to life and then the tell-tale sound of Ignis driving out of his life. But he hadn't, which was weird. Maybe Ignis was texting someone? Gladio, probably. Maybe he'd called Noct and asked what he wanted for dinner, now that he didn't have any plans for the evening. Or maybe he'd fallen and hit his head on Prompto's old bicycle and got amnesia and forgot all about wanting to break up. (With Prompto's luck, he'd forget they'd ever dated to begin with.)

"Fuck," Prompto told the door, feeling manipulated by his own damn curiosity, when he should just give up and go sit on the sofa with ice cream and potato chips to drown his pain. (Except he'd have to go shopping first, because he didn't have unhealthy snacks, and that would also mean going outside.) "Fuck."

He scuffed into his sneakers and opened the door. There Ignis' car was, in the carport, still looking utterly out of place in this boring little suburb. And there Ignis was, head down on the steering wheel, shoulders shaking, crying like he was heartbroken, which was dumb, seeing as how he'd been the heartbreaker in this scenario.

Prompto wrestled with himself, trying to believe that he should stay in the house with his hurt feelings and leave Ignis to his own. Maybe Ignis deserved to feel rotten. Probably.

But it killed Prompto to leave him alone.

Prompto walked around and tried the passenger side door. It opened, so he slipped inside.

"One moment, please," Ignis said, his voice calm and eerily serene despite the sobs that still wracked him, uncontrollable, his hands clenched at the top of the steering wheel and his face buried where his wrists crossed. The pose struck Prompto as childlike, like silent tears were an ingrained habit, to make the least trouble. Or to avoid being overheard, more likely.

Prompto debated saying a hundred thousand things, ranging from the inane – _are you okay?_ – to the stupid – _it'll be okay_ – to the intrusive – _if you want to talk, I'm all ears_. Ignis had pretty clearly blown past all his limits, not so much surrendering to emotion as being laid siege to, his walls falling with a graceless ignominy that he'd probably hate in the morning.

But he'd allowed Prompto to be here. Might even in some way have wanted him here, and Prompto wanted above all to be useful.

He twisted around in his seat so he was kneeling, and then draped himself over as much of Ignis as he could cover with a hug. He didn't make any attempt to pry him loose; he just tried to be a warm human body offering awkward comfort. He couldn't be anyone beside himself, after all.

He did let some of his words spill loose, even though they sounded as dumb spoken against the back of Ignis' neck as they did in his head. But some of Ignis' tension seemed to respond to even statements of obvious fact, like _I'm here_ and _I'm not going anywhere_.

"I just broke up with you," Ignis said after a minute. And Prompto kind of wanted to punch whoever'd trained Ignis to carry on a normal-sounding conversation when his heart had been ripped out. "Why are you – " and he stopped there, with a pathetic sniffle.

"Because I like you," Prompto said. "And I want you to be happy, hey, no, whoa." Ignis' hunched-over sobbing started up again at that declaration, which wasn't the effect Prompto had intended. "It's okay, it's okay. Shhh, come on."

"I want," Ignis panted, like he was struggling to speak now, "I just wanted," and Prompto didn't expect for either of those sentences to go anywhere, because when did Ignis want anything? Besides his duty and Noct and all that stuff.

Prompto tried to imagine Ignis wanting him that much, and it made him feel a burn of embarrassed pleasure and pride. Somewhere, there was a world where they wouldn't have to hide and sneak around and sacrifice their happiness, and he just wanted to box all that up and give it to Ignis. _Here, have some freedom._

But for now he focused on reassuring Ignis that he didn't need to explain anything, and coaxing him out of the car and back into the house. Ignis was pliant and obedient in a way that freaked Prompto right the hell out, but he took advantage of it anyway, making Ignis drink a glass of water and then wash his face in the bathroom and change into Prompto's largest tracksuit to sleep in.

He still had to deal with a few reflexive "I should go home"s and an increasing number of shame-faced apologies, but he just ignored those. They were a kind of residual professionalism that Ignis couldn't help falling back on; he'd been trained that way, and it'd be unfair to expect him to do better when he was otherwise falling apart. Professionalism gave him a shell, like he was made out of that very expensive non-stick ceramic cookware, so that even if Noct yelled at him or insulted him to his face, the idea of yelling back never even crossed Ignis' mind. He was good at using mild disappointment and excellent manners as weapons, but tended to be stiff and out of his element in situations that called for spontaneous actions, like hugging and high-fives; all that stuff that came naturally to Gladio, with his easy, charismatic people skills. Ignis always acted as if he was being observed, because perhaps he had been, all those years under his uncle's roof; he was determined to give a flawless performance, at any rate.

But then, maybe sometimes he locked himself in the car, his one safe place, and _everything came crushing down on him, all at once_ and none of his skills or techniques could withstand the flood.

Prompto steered Ignis into the bedroom with a hand at the small of his back. He'd cleaned and vacuumed, changed the sheets and thrown the windows open to get fresh air in, all because he'd had high hopes for a different end to their evening. He could see Ignis noticing, with even more weary shame, and didn't know how to tell him it was okay.

(Which would be a transparent lie; Prompto kind of wanted to fall apart himself, but taking care of Ignis precluded that. But he didn't feel okay. He felt like he was walking through a bad dream, and he didn't look forward to how the next few days were going to play out, when his raw emotions would be nearly impossible to hide. Maybe much, much later he could work up the nerve to ask Ignis how he managed such usually flawless compartmentalization. It seemed handy, if soul-killing.)

He tugged the comforter back, nudged Ignis in, turned the light off, and then crawled in with him. He was overthinking so much that every option seemed equally terrible: sleeping on the floor, or in his parents' bed, or downstairs on the sofa. And in that case, he decided muzzily, if there were no good options, he might as well be comfortable. Plus, this way Ignis was sandwiched between him and the wall.

He couldn't escape easily, Prompto reasoned, and fell asleep nursing the dull pain that came when he thought about Ignis preferring to escape than to be with him.

He slept badly, and he wasn't sure Ignis slept at all, though he had at some point in the night stolen the pillow and curled himself into a ball around it. Prompto had forgotten to close the curtains, and the sheers let the early morning light flow in. Good when he wanted to head out for a morning run, bad for when another hour or two of oblivious sleep was what he needed. Ignis' hair poked out every which way because he hadn't washed the styling product out, but Prompto knew it'd be soft at the nape of his neck and behind his ears. Ignis needed to shave less than Prompto did, courtesy of Noct; the curve of his cheek would be more smooth than whiskery. Not that he minded whiskers. Even if Ignis grew a horrible mustache and waxed it into curlicues, Prompto would still find him gorgeous.

He couldn't imagine not being attracted to Ignis, and the idea that he was going to have to get out of the habit of not touching him when they were alone like this hurt.

And made him angry.

He grabbed his phone off the headboard and fired off a series of questions to Gladio, who'd probably be up at this ridiculous hour.

His alarm beeped forty minutes later, and Ignis stirred immediately, as if he was desperate for some excuse to leave.

"I should be going," Ignis said, right on cue. He sounded like someone doing a bad imitation of him, his voice thick, like he had a sore throat. Which maybe he did. "I have work."

Of course he did. He always did. "I can make breakfast." Neither of them had eaten last night, and Prompto could feel the gnaw of hunger, even though he didn't have an appetite. He wondered if mentioning that he had that coffee Ignis liked would go over badly, too much like a reprimand: _we were supposed to have sex and a cuddly morning after, and instead look where we are._

"The offer is appreciated," Ignis said, detaching himself from the pillow with a confused frown, as if he had no idea how it had come to spend the night in his death grip. "But I really must refuse."

Prompto did not remind him that he had to eat something; it wasn't his business anymore. He did stay where he was for a bit longer, looking at his phone, knowing that Ignis didn't want to crawl over him and that he really should move, to be polite.

He didn't want to be polite. He wanted a hug and an apology and his boyfriend back. And a billion yen while he was dreaming, and a puppy, and fewer freckles, and world peace.

Gladio's replies started pinging in while Ignis was borrowing Prompto's hairbrush, attempting to tame his spectacular bedhead before heading out. Prompto read, and replied, and kept an eye on Ignis, choosing his moment. Finally, Ignis had his hair as flat as it would get without a good soak, and he turned with his shoulders back, full of purpose and intent, expression pleasant and bland, if you ignored the red puffiness of his eyes.

"Gladio's mom was in the Crownsguard, did you know that?" Prompto said. He wanted to sound conversational and not confrontational, but probably failed.

Ignis frowned, annoyed to have his effort to disengage derailed. "She was always very kind to the children in the Citadel. So, yes. I knew her and her service to the Crown well." His tone implied that Prompto was crossing a line, talking about people and things he didn't and couldn't understand.

He held up his phone. "Gladio says," and Ignis winced, "and no, I didn't _tell_ him, have some faith in me." Ignis raised and dropped a hand, as if implying that everything was out of his hands, and it was impossible to undo whatever Prompto had already said. "Anyway. He says there's nothing in the terms of either of your contracts that says you can't date or get married or have children, unless there are chain of command issues, and that the whole arranged marriage thing is just for royalty, and anyway, even then it's not _forced_. Not totally."

"Given that I prefer the company of men," aw, Ignis' cheeks were stained by a blush at that admission, "any marriage of convenience was, regrettably, out of consideration."

"Gladio also says you probably shouldn't grow up and turn into your uncle." Prompto wasn't sure exactly what that meant, but Gladio had told him to tell Ignis that. "And he wishes you'd talked to him about this stuff, because he gets it. Direct quote." Prompto shrugged, trying to shake the tension out of his shoulders. "I was never one of the kids at the Citadel, duh, I'm aware there's a ton of stuff that goes over my head, but I _am_ an Argentum, and we don't go down without a fight. Sorry, man." And then, because Ignis deserved honesty, "I want you to be able to want to be happy for yourself and not feel like you're betraying the Crown. Maybe not today. Someday. And maybe not me, but somebody."

Ignis was staring at him as if Prompto had suddenly started speaking in Ancient Sol, and Prompto was struck by the inevitable mortification from having screwed everything all up. He should have just told Gladio to call Ignis or take him out for coffee or something.

His thoughts were spiraling, every wrong thing he'd ever done taking this opportunity to crowd into his consciousness, like he was throwing a party of fail. But Ignis blinked once, and a single tear slid down his cheek, and suddenly Prompto realized this, right here, was going to be one of his lifetime peak moments of shame. He'd made Ignis cry again. He _sucked_.

"I really like you," Ignis said, again with that flat, fake unemotional tone. He shut his mouth on whatever he'd been planning to say next, lips pressed together as he swallowed. His eyes were bright, and Prompto hoped he didn't do any more crying. Otherwise he'd have to flee Insomnia in the night to go live in the desert and wear sackcloth and eat lizards. "But I shouldn't be selfishly focused on my personal happiness – " those last words were said with devastating dubiousness, like happiness was one of those loud souvenir t-shirts in gaudy colors that deserved to get tossed straight in the rag-bag.

Prompto sighed. "No one else will," he pointed out. "I mean – " He threw his arms out to encompass the whole house they were standing in. "Parents? Off living their own lives, right? Work? That's where you get scheduled to open the morning after you closed the night before, or a six am text saying, _Prompto, go take school pictures way across the city, be there by nine_. Friends, maybe, but even then, if you don't stick up for yourself you get walked over."

"I take it you're referring to your own experience not letting Noct take advantage of you." The words were sarcastic and meant to be cutting, but Prompto had a good eye for defensiveness.

"It helps that we went to school together," he said, trying to sound diffident. And, of course, that Prompto never wanted to let Lady Lunafreya down, and she believed he should be Noct's friend. "That's why the King let him go to regular school, right? So people would treat him like a normal kid. Plus, he never plays the _I'm the prince, you have to do what I say_ card. At least not with me."

Ignis sighed. "He thinks you're cool." The words were said with a baffled wistfulness; Ignis standing there in his button-down shirt with his sad 7-3 hair, wondering why anyone wouldn't perceive his innate coolness.

Prompto was just as baffled, and said so. "We're from different worlds, that's all. He takes some pretty amazing stuff for granted, like magic, and then gets quiet and weird when I say I need a day job, obvs, or else I can't pay rent or eat. I'm not saying," he hurried to add as Ignis frowned, "he doesn't know most people work so they don't starve. Just that there's academic knowing and personal knowing."

"Which is how he ended up taking on a part-time job and attempting to feed himself off his earnings," Ignis deducted. He sounded like the idea pained him.

"To be fair," because Noct was Prompto's bro, and he didn't want to throw him under the bus totally, "he absolutely could have gotten some fancy business internship more – " airquotes " – _fitting to his station_. But that would come with strings. Networking and favors – favoritism – and gossip. Instead, he's getting the experience and meeting the people, and it's all low-key and mostly anonymous. I have pictures of him in the cap and the hairnet to keep him humble. Just FYI."

"The King was furious," Ignis said, his voice very soft, as if worried he'd be overheard. He probably didn't have much experience gossiping, or he'd know there was no way anyone could hear what he was saying all the way from the Citadel. (Unless Prompto's house was bugged – his parents would be _thrilled_ if that was so; it'd give them serious radical cred. Though that would mean the spymasters would have sextapes, not so cool.) "But it isn't the case that Noct neglects his official duties."

That was a line of thought Prompto could get behind, though he tried to tread lightly. "Right? He's still on, like, three different council committees, and does all that charity stuff with the children's hospital, and trains and learns magic, and – other stuff, you know better than me. He works his royal butt off. Plus he's got a crappy part-time job, just like any twenty-year-old."

"I never did." Ignis still sounded a bit distant, like he was thinking this through. Irritating, as Prompto was impatient for him to reach the obvious conclusion.

"Cause you had a full-time job. With overtime." Prompto shrugged, trying to shake the angry tension out of his shoulders. "A job you started when you were a kid, and like – I have a pretty good idea of how many things you never did because you never had the time because you were taking care of Noct. Which you know I'd never tell you was a bad thing – you and Gladio, you're Noct's family, or close enough, and he'd be devastated without you guys. But I think he'd also be _extremely_ – like, _incandescently_ – pissed to know he was the reason you felt you need to be single again."

Ignis countered that quickly and with a burr of anger. "I never said that."

Prompto sighed. "The whole world is falling out of control, and it has been for a really long time. Before we were born, even. And I know you with your security clearance see the big picture a lot clearer than I do, but – just knowing what's going on doesn't mean you have any control over what happens, or the power to stop it. Even the King doesn't, or else he wouldn't be making a deal with the enemy to marry Noct off, right?" Puzzle pieces were snapping together in his head, guided by Ignis' alternating expressions of misery and annoyance. "Burning yourself out – going without food and sleep and comfort of any kind – doesn't help anyone. You're trying to throw your wall around all of Lucis, and you can't. So what happens when Noct needs you? What if he called right now and wanted you to come over and talk wedding stuff?"

"I'd go, of course."

"Would he believe you if you said it was a good thing, and Lady Lunafreya would be a good partner, and they'd come to love each other in time or whatever the party line is?"

"Of late, he doesn't believe me about much," Ignis pointed out, words sharp but honest, in a blatantly painful way.

Prompto wanted to hug him. "Maybe if you lied to him less, I dunno. He needs his friend Ignis more than an advisor, I can tell you that." The mental puzzle was assembled enough that he had a pretty good idea of what the picture was, and what he should do about it. "You're staying here until we have to leave," he said. He crossed his arms, trying to look Gladio-solid; resolute and stalwart, the hero of the game. "I don't think there's even one thing in your apartment that you'd actually miss – besides the coffee maker," he added the instant Ignis opened his mouth to reply. Ignis raised an eyebrow but then answered with a shrug. "You can bring it here. And clothes and stuff. Take Gladio with you, but leave the creepy painting. I want you safe and taken care of, even if happiness isn't happening."

"Gladio's far more intelligent than most people realize," Ignis said, using that distant tone again, like he was narrating a film that was utterly uninteresting. "I'm sure he suspects that I..." He let the sentence die, but looked miserable about it.

Because he couldn't say _that I'm dating you_ any more, right. Prompto would have to deal with that after he solved the problem of Ignis having run himself into the ground.

"Does it matter?" he asked. "Like. Really. Would there be repercussions or – I don't know – demotions? Lectures from the Marshall?"

Ignis shook his head. "I have no idea."

"I'm calling Gladio," Prompto said, holding his phone up. When Ignis didn't protest, that's exactly what Prompto did.

He had time to get Ignis some water and headache pills and one of those fruit-nut energy bars before he had to run off to work, but he got a message from Gladio twenty minutes later that he'd collected Ignis. Which sounded ominous.

Apparently one of the good things about being senior Crownsguard, unlike Prompto, was that they could take the whole day off, no problem. The worst thing that happened was that a couple of the Glaive insinuated that Gladio and Ignis had been out drinking and were hungover, but no one took them seriously. Prompto got the feeling that people were worried Ignis had finally cracked under all the pressure. Pretty perceptive of them.

He was glad he didn't have to field questions from Noct, even though he knew that was because Noct didn't have any reason to suspect that Prompto knew anything about Ignis – not where he hung out when he was off work, not how good a kisser he was, and definitely not where he'd slept last night. Prompto took all his own worries down to the shooting range and killed the fuck out of a bunch of moving MT targets. The concentration he needed cleared his head, and shooting helped burn off some of the anger that kept bubbling up.

He tried not to think of himself as the weak link. It was probably high time for him to stop childishly thinking of his life as a game, when everyone knew that he wasn't the real main character in the story that was unfolding around them. Right now, that was the King, no matter what his parents said. But with the whole wedding thing, he could tell that Noct was going to be stepping into the spotlight, and then who knew, maybe when they got to Altissia it would turn out that Lunafreya was going to be the protagonist of the third act.

He didn't have magic, or ancestors who made deals with the gods; he wasn't anyone special. He'd literally been picked up from the side of the road, and he'd had the most ordinary suburban upbringing imaginable. He was going to have to come to terms with the fact that he was one hundred percent companion material, and his stats weren't even very good. He'd probably be very, very expendable, if they were ever in a real fight.

But the one thing he didn't have was the ability to lie down, stop caring, and do nothing. Maybe that could be his superpower: _Tenacity-Man_. Maybe someday, if he had fans, he'd get his own DLC.

When he got home from work, the car was still in the driveway, and his heart unclenched a little. Inside, Ignis was in the kitchen, cooking up a curry that smelled amazing. Gladio had stretched out on the sofa like an occupying army, and even though he looked like he was reading a book – not one of Prompto's, he must have brought it with him – Prompto felt the heavy weight of his gaze like judgment.

"Hi, honeys, I'm home," he said, just to be obnoxious. Ignis gave him a distracted _hello_; Gladio raised a hand, then dropped it. "So what's up?" He pulled out a kitchen chair and sat down so he didn't have to stand and fidget with nerves. (He could bounce his knee instead, because that was subtle, yup.)

"Domestic bliss, apparently," Gladio said, voice flat like he was incredibly unimpressed, but his irritation seemed to be aimed at Ignis rather than Prompto. Prompto scooted his chair back just a little anyway. "We spoke," he added, tipping the book in Ignis' direction. "The rules about you and him being together are a lot iffier than my parents' case, but you're discreet, and people'd been wondering anyway why Ignis hadn't cracked under all the pressure. Probably having someone taking care of him held off the inevitable meltdown."

Ignis was suspiciously unprotesting of Gladio's jabs, and Prompto wondered if he was just used to them now, after a whole day of being harassed. He felt kind of bad about that, but having an outside perspective and – more or less – validation was... a huge relief. 

"I'm staying for dinner," Gladio added, "but then I'm fucking off to go put a bee in Noct's bonnet about how he needs an advisor who's not burning out from eighty-hour weeks."

"Please don't," Ignis said. "We discussed this."

Gladio sat up and shrugged, tossing the book aside. "We argued about it, but as the Prince's Shield I'm allowed to not take your opinion into account when I think Noct's in danger."

All the hairs on Prompto's arms raised and it felt like the room temperature dropped ten degrees. But a moment later, the chill was gone.

"That right there, Iggy," Gladio said, and he sounded sad and frustrated. "I know you have better control over magic than that. We're not the Glaive, we don't do party tricks."

Prompto twitched. He knew what Gladio was talking about; he'd been envious of how the Glaive learned to warp and cast spells, because it looked both deeply cool and super useful in a fight, but then Cor explained why the Crownsguard didn't do that, with a short aside about why Noct's Crownsguard in particular couldn't. He'd seen Noct's scars from the Marilith attack, even though they were old and faded to silver. He knew Noct kicked ass in training – more and more often, _his_ ass – but that he didn't have unlimited power even for himself. He couldn't share the way King Regis did, and his Crownsguard wouldn't take... even though apparently Ignis knew how.

"How about," Prompto said, before any more insults or threats could be made, "you and me help out in the kitchen and set the table, and no one talks about any heavy stuff on an empty stomach."

"Your kitchen isn't big enough for three," Ignis said. "And the meal will be done in ten minutes."

Prompto would bet his bottom yen that he just didn't want to have Gladio blocking his escape route. But that was fine. he put Gladio in charge of salad, which could be chopped on the counter, out of the way.

Conversation over dinner was awkward and jerky. By unspoken agreement they avoided topics related to work or Noct or marriage or dating or politics, which left very little. Prompto learned a lot about Gladio's kid sister and her soccer team, and Ignis gamely walked him through the recipe for the curry. He said he'd be happy to show Prompto sometime, and then very obviously remembered breaking up with him the day before and had to look down at his plate with a frown, like he'd just lost his appetite and was trying to discern why.

Gladio tossed in a bit of information about a warm front that was moving in and might bring rain, which Ignis and Prompto grabbed onto like a life preserver. Any other time Prompto would have been quick to mock how sad that was, but today he was fully aware of just how pathetic he was, full of want and need and exhausted from the effort of trying to be an adult. He just wanted a hug, and he couldn't even ask for one.

Ignis looked like he felt the same way. But he was here, and even though no one had said anything to assuage Prompto's manifold worries, the coffee machine was tucked in the corner next to the microwave, like it was shy about being an expensive luxury in a bog-standard suburban house.

He hoped his bathroom had been overtaken by fancy toiletries, and his clothes were sharing the wardrobe with Ignis'. He knew Ignis might just want the company but not the relationship, but he hoped not.

Finally, dinner was done, and Gladio cleaned up with military speed and efficiency and then headed out, waving off Ignis' offer of a ride to the station. Prompto had thought it'd been awkward because Gladio was there – _sorry, man_ – but with him gone suddenly the air was so thick with awkwardness that it was hard to breathe. He considered going to bed in self-defense, even though it wasn't even nine yet, and then realized they needed to discuss where they were going to sleep.

"Gladio gave me this," Ignis said, pulling a creased bit of paper out of his pocket. He gave it a very skeptical look, but after a moment handed it to Prompto.

Gladio wasn't an artist, but Prompto recognized the design of a card from a popular board game. The cartoon man on it had his face in his hands, and his speech bubble read _Get out of "being an idiot" free card_.

Prompto couldn't hold back his laughter, giddy with relief and hope. The last thing he'd wanted to do was sit down and talk over his feelings, or have to field apologies. He didn't want any of that spiraling into even worse weirdness.

"I told him the real world doesn't work like that," Ignis went on doggedly. "And he said, we were born in a magical city, why couldn't a piece of paper rescind something I regret very much?"

"You know, I used to think you guys were cool." Prompto shook his head. "You're nerds just like the rest of us."

"Breaking up with you made perfect sense in my head." Ignis hunched his shoulders in a defensive shrug. "I've always – I was raised to discard and distrust anything that might possibly impair my duty to the Crown."

"But that's not really true," Prompto said. "I mean. A four-year-old kid doesn't need an advisor. You could totally have started the advising gig after high school. The King wanted Noct to have a friend. That's not duty, that's love." Ignis stared at him through narrowed eyes. "And it's not like _Noct_'s ever asked you to be dutiful and perfect – has he?"

"Noct," Ignis said, with a hint of a bristle to his tone as if Prompto had some nerve bringing him into a conversation about them, "as we are both aware, wants friends. He is, nevertheless, our future king."

"He doesn't forget that part," Prompto snapped back. "Not ever. How could he? But he's allowed to have a _life_. Except for the parts where he gets to choose what job he does when he grows up and who he has to marry. He gets to pick his friends, and his clothes, and what he doesn't want to eat. And he knows other people have more choices and less responsibility – " Prompto raised his hand as Example A "– but he's always been pretty chill about it."

Prompto could see the argument that Ignis wanted to make – that he'd thought breaking up was a good idea because of any other reason than he felt guilty that Noct had been roped into an unavoidable political marriage. But... that kind of was the reason. Why should Ignis be allowed something Noct wasn't, et cetera et cetera, this unseemliness will not stand.

If Noct knew, he'd be furious, though, so Prompto figured it was better to hash the argument out here and now, before Ignis took it into his head to go and confess all, out of some misguided desire to be blamed or punished or whatever for daring to want even just one thing for himself.

Prompto wondered if Ignis had even been allowed to have toys of his own as a kid, or if he'd had to give them away to Noct if he liked them, seeing as Ignis was older and more mature and had to be a good role model. He wondered if that was why Ignis had sunk his money into a ridiculously expensive car; twenty years of pent-up repressed resentment over wanting cool toys (plus he would have been fairly certain that when Noct did get his license, the King would give him a much better car, so Ignis' would be safe).

Prompto realized that in the analogy part of his brain he was categorizing himself with the cool car as a thing that Ignis wanted, and he recognized how absurdly self-important that made him seem. But... he suspected he could fall in love with Ignis, or maybe he already had, and he wanted to be wanted back so badly.

"Come with me?" Ignis said, after the silence had gone on long enough Prompto was trying to convince himself to give up hope. Ignis held out his hand and Prompto grabbed hold, letting himself be led, even though it was his house and he knew very well where his bedroom was.

The suitcase in the hallway, against the wall by the door, was his first hint that maybe his room might be way different from that morning.

Or maybe not. The bed looked the same – well, duh, Ignis couldn't bring sheets, they'd be too small. There was a tidy selection of books lined up at the back of the desk, next to a sewing box, and the picture in its silly frame.

Plus the car was in the driveway, Prompto reminded himself, and the coffee maker was in the kitchen, and Ignis himself was here, having chosen Prompto over that creepy picture of the Oracle.

Ignis seemed to get stuck, standing there by the wardrobe, holding Prompto's hand.

"What do you want?" Prompto asked. It had been a long day, and he didn't need uncertainty.

"You," Ignis said, distracted. "Can I – ?" and he tapped a finger against the button placket of Prompto's generic uniform shirt for newbies.

"Go for it." Prompto shrugged. Ignis had half the buttons undone before he remembered that they were in relationship limbo – officially not together, but maybe unofficially together? And maybe he was still kind of mad for being taken for a ride on the mood swing roller-coaster but, he decided, he wouldn't mind Ignis making it up to him with sex, if that's what this was.

But he was going to get Ignis just as naked and vulnerable. He was owed.

Ignis didn't protest, but he did insist on taking hangers out of the wardrobe and hanging both their shirts and trousers up together. Prompto counter-argued that their socks and underwear could stay on the floor and anyone who tried to carry them off to the hamper would be kicked out of the bedroom. And the house. Naked.

"You wouldn't want to be a public menace, would you?" Prompto asked, trying to hip-check Ignis into bed. Ignis obligingly fell backwards, but dragged Prompto down on top of him. It was a damn good thing for him that Prompto had good aim, or he'd probably have ended up with a knee in an unfortunate place.

Ignis let Prompto squirm into a comfortable position and then wrapped his arms around him, which... was definitely hugging and not making out. Prompto was down for that, though. He closed his eyes, head pillowed on Ignis' shoulder, and curled one hand around his neck, the other sliding into his hair. It was nice. 

That didn't stop him from starting to fidget after a few minutes and asking, just for his own information, whether Ignis just wanted to go to sleep like this or what.

"No," Ignis said, and rolled over so Prompto was under him.

Prompto figured that was good enough for now.

*

They were up way too late, repeatedly distracting each other from things that probably should be talked over, and Prompto was deep asleep when his phone started to ring, irritating and incessant. He leaned over the edge of the bed and felt around until he found it where it'd fallen on the floor, and answered it like that, dangling off the edge of the mattress.

"Wake up call," Gladio said. "First one's free, after that I hurt you."

"Urgh." Prompto dropped his other hand onto his face, trying to rub his eyes. "Wh'time's it?"

"Time to get your ass out of bed." Gladio sounded like he was laughing at him. Prompto was too sleepy to even feel annoyed about it.

"Thanks," Prompto said through a yawn. "You're a real pal."

"You guys okay?" Gladio asked, apparently not capable of taking the hint that Prompto wasn't in a chatty mood.

"Awesome," Prompto said anyway. "Iggy'll tell you all the details."

"Doubtful," Ignis said. He sounded even more sleep-whammied that Prompto, which proved to be the impetus for Prompto to haul himself back up, so he could gaze adoringly on Ignis' bedhead and scowl from being rudely awakened. Ignis had a bruise with toothmarks right where his neck met his shoulder, that hopefully he'd be able to pass off as some kind of training incident. Whoops. (Prompto remembered leaving that bruise, though, and he'd do it again a hundred times over; he'd made Ignis _writhe_.) "We'll see you later," he added, and made a swiping gesture with his hand, either suggesting he wanted to cut Gladio's throat – possible – or he wanted Prompto to hang up – more likely.

"Bye," Prompto told Gladio cheerily, and ended the call before Gladio could ask any more questions.

Ignis was already sitting up and moving to get out of bed. Prompto wanted to drag him back and keep him here for the rest of the day, but that wasn't realistic. He needed to be grown up about this, and go to work, and trust that Ignis would come home in the evening.

Still, he superstitiously hoarded everything he thought might be a sign that his trust was well-founded. The silver-backed hairbrush in the bathroom. The decadent cup of coffee he was handed when he came downstairs. The way Ignis' fingers brushed over his own, again and again, until Prompto started to suspect that he was being handed things just so Ignis could steal a touch as his own way of bracing for the day.

Prompto put down the pepper shaker that he hadn't wanted – did people actually put pepper on toast? – and grabbed Ignis' hand instead, slotting their fingers together and hanging on.

"Is this okay?" Ignis asked, reaching over his plate to pick up his mug left-handed, rather than let go of Prompto.

The question felt uncomfortable, like walking into a spider's web: not such a big deal in itself, but it implied horrible things in his hair and crawling down his neck. Prompto made a face. "That's not what you should be asking about," he said, in response to the eyebrow Ignis raised in query. "Don't ask if you can kiss me or hold my hand, it makes me feel like you think I've got doubts. Like you're a fish I might throw back in the sea."

Ignis' eyes narrowed; he didn't like that metaphor, well, fine. Prompto squeezed his hand as a warning not to interrupt, he needed to finish saying his bit.

"I love kissing you and this –" he tapped Ignis' thumb with his own "– and what freaks me out is you made me so happy, and I thought you were happy, but you thought you were _too_ happy and that was a bad thing. And you were hiding that for who knows how long. Like in your head we always had an expiration date that moved up if you felt too good? I need," he bit his lower lip, trying to make his point concisely and not babble, "you to be sure. Because I am."

Ignis stared at him, his pretty green eyes not blinking long enough that Prompto's started to water in response. Then he took a breath and looked down at their linked hands, tapping his fingers absently like he was trying to transmit a coded message. "I love you," he said defensively, as if he had no idea how that had happened. As if he expected to be told he shouldn't or couldn't.

Not exactly grand romance, but Prompto's heart banged around his ribs while he tried to get his breath back. "Okay," he said, still a bit breathlessly, and then wanted to smack himself in the face for being just as bad at this as Ignis was. "You know I love you, too, right?"

Ignis still couldn't look up at him, but he nodded. After a moment, he pushed his chair back and stood, crossing to Prompto's side of the table to give him a lingering kiss that started melancholy but pretty quickly bled into making out, with Prompto sliding his chair back so Ignis could straddle his lap and touch him. Prompto was on the verge of suggesting taking things to the sofa when Ignis pulled away and turned into a sensible adult who needed to head off to work at a reasonable time.

"Nooo," Prompto protested, but Ignis was already getting up and clearing away the breakfast dishes. He felt the chill and the sexual frustration like a kind of foreboding: after all, hadn't Ignis pretty much just said that he'd had to break up with Prompto because he loved him? Prompto refused to go a whole day with that worry, however irrational, hanging over his head. "We're finishing what you just started tonight." He hoped that sounded less needy than he felt, but whatever.

Ignis shot him a smoldering look from the kitchen which made Prompto's toes curl. "Most definitely."

Well. Okay then, Prompto decided, and got up to do his own share of the work, humming cheerfully under his breath.


	6. Chapter 6

Even the best hoping-to-get-laid plans could go terribly wrong, though, Prompto discovered.

Ignis drove Prompto home that evening (Prompto suspected Gladio of pulling strings – i.e., telling Noct – so Ignis could leave at a decent hour), and the first sign anything was wrong was that the lights were on.

"Did you forget to turn them off?" Ignis asked, moving so he was standing between Prompto and the front door. He'd shifted fluidly from his normal perfect posture, drawn imperiously up to his full height, to what Prompto now knew was him getting ready to kick ass: his center of gravity lowered, preparing to defend them both.

"Stop that," Prompto said, even though Ignis went off the sexy-o-meter when he started to prowl, eyes focused like lasers, poised to do aerial kicks and backflips and paralyze Prompto with lust. "I _hope_ I did, because otherwise it's Ena and Tarrix. My parents," he added, when Ignis didn't let up with the glaring. "Not a stabbing occasion. Break out the good manners, but not the best manners."

The front door was unlocked, too, but Prompto still clung to hope up until he saw the two pairs of work boots lined up in the entranceway. When he'd been a little kid he'd loved coming home and seeing they were back; it'd been the best kind of surprise, meaning hugs and spicy homecooked meals and someone to talk to.

He really didn't want to talk to them about Ignis now. He had a whole list of things to hide from them, starting with the breakup but including the royal wedding trip to Altissia and how good he was getting at shooting things. Plus the last couple of times they'd been home there'd been arguments and him leaving to sulk dramatically at either Noct's (where there were games) or Ignis' (where there was Ignis, who always managed to make him feel calm in his own skin again).

But still. He stepped out of his own shoes and up into the front hall. The slippers he and Ignis had been using were gone; he grabbed two new pairs from the rack.

"I'm home," he yelled through the open door to the living room, just like he always did, and Ena hollered back, "About time."

Despite how how heart was sinking into a defensive position of its own in his chest, he grinned. His mom always said the same thing, and it reminded him of how when he was little he'd thought she meant she'd been eager to see him, too.

Maybe she had been. Whatever. That was a long time ago.

"I brought someone," Prompto went on, and summoned his Player Character confidence, telling himself he was someone who was brave and could totally do this. He grabbed Ignis' hand and dragged him along, into the living room. Here went nothing. "Ma, da, this is Ignis. Ignis, my parents, Ena and Tarrix."

"It's a pleasure to meet you," Ignis said. He sounded like he meant it, but Prompto could see the wariness in the way his gaze flicked between his mom, in the kitchen heating up the leftover curry, and his dad, sorting a mountain of laundry piled on the sofa. Prompto realized too late that he should have given Ignis a hint to help with their foreign names, so he didn't mix them up.

"We're together," he added, his stupid voice rising like that was a question. "Like. Dating." He'd mention that Ignis was staying here later. When he had a reading on how this was going down.

"You're only nineteen," Ena snapped, and Prompto snapped right back: "I'm _twenty_."

Her shoulders dropped. Prompto took a deep breath and tried not to let it get to him. Ignis squeezed his hand.

"Shit. You had a birthday and we missed it again." She looked over at Tarrix. "We were going to take him out drinking."

"Ma," Prompto said, and then repeated himself louder as they started a back-and-forth of blame. "_Ma_. It's cool, I get it. There's a war happening and you're on the front lines, I'm proud of you guys. Can we just... eat dinner and not yell?" He crossed his arms. "And be nice to Ignis, okay? I like him."

Tarrix snorted. "You better, if you're sleeping with him."

"Oh my god," Prompto said in despair. "Leave me alone to go die in peace in the kitchen."

"That'd be unsanitary," Ignis said, looking a bit stunned and possibly blushing.

But Ena laughed – she had a dark sense of humor – and grinned up at Ignis. She was nearly a head shorter than Prompto now, and he always felt like he loomed awkwardly over her. Poor Ignis was like a lightning rod in a room of short irritable people.

"If you kids can take over dinner," she said, rinsing her hands quickly and wiping them off on her house pants, "I'll tidy up."

"Ignis made the curry," Prompto said, pointing at the pot.

"We'll see how your da likes it," Ena said, but as she slipped out of the kitchen she went up on her toes and gave Ignis a quick hug that startled him as much as it did Prompto. "We picked up stuff at the Galahdan market," she added, grabbing a cloth bag that had been set down by the door. "If you want a cheap-ass late birthday celebration." She started unpacking boxes and bundles of food onto the counter, setting them down with enough force for Prompto to know she was still upset with herself.

Prompto set to work dishing up dinner for four. He tried to create a distraction by telling Ignis, as each item was unpacked, what the different vegetables and noodles and sauces were – stuff probably someone raised in Insomnia wouldn't know – while explaining to Ena about how Ignis was awesome at cooking. He wasn't sure when he should drop the bomb that Ignis had learned in order to cook for Noct. Not now, though, not when Ignis was asking tentative culinary questions and Ena was giving him civil answers and not rolling her eyes at his accent.

She looked up at Ignis suddenly, breaking off her advice for how to slice the hot green peppers properly to point at him. "You're the one he made my stew for," she said. "Right?"

"The fish stew?" Ignis asked, blinking but taking the question in stride. "It was excellent."

"He wanted to impress you, I guess," Ena went on, blithely ignoring Prompto's attempt to use telepathy to get her to stop embarrassing him. "Or it could have been a test?" She looked over at Prompto with an eyebrow raised. "See if any of his friends could handle ethnic food."

She put emphasis on friends to make it clear just who she was talking about: the rich and aristocratic parasites profiting off the hard work of the common people. Hopefully the nuance flew over Ignis' head, though his expression shifted, becoming a bit more calculated as he tried to suss out the situation. Prompto prayed for her not to bring up Noct; he doubted Ignis would keep quiet if she did.

But Ignis seemed determined to keep the conversation on food, thank goodness. "What are these?" he asked, picking up a small box full of berries. He sounded merely curious, but his eyes had kind of a laser-focus intensity. Prompto hoped the berries weren't a security threat or something.

Ena shrugged, and half-turned to call across the room, "Rix?"

"They're ulwa," his dad said, or something that sounded like that. "They grow wild all along the coast – or they used to." He got that hard set to his jaw, like he was half a second away from sharing his thoughts on the Wall and the occupation and how crap Regis was as a leader. Prompto wondered if Ignis would run away if he begged him to.

"Ulwa," Ignis repeated, his interest very clear. "Are they by any chance grown in Tenebrae?" _Oooh_, so that was what this was about. "Would it be at all possible – " and Prompto really wished his telepathy worked, because if Ignis offered to buy them his dad would never forgive him " -- for me to have ten or so of these? Please?"

Tarrix shrugged like he didn't care, which probably meant they were the most expensive item they'd bought. He had his pride. "Take them all. I've no idea if they're Tenebraean, but they've got quite a shoreline there, I hear."

"Thank you," Ignis breathed out, clutching the box like he'd been given a treasure. A few seconds later he realized how weird he was being and started to look embarrassed, but that was when Ena snapped her fingers and said she something to show him.

"Ma," Prompto pleaded, ladling curry over rice and sliding the bowls toward Ignis to get garnished with pickles and veg and carried out to the table. "Recent scientific studies have proved it's possible to die of embarrassment."

"Who raised you to be such a liar?" She shook her head and grabbed a basket of clean folded work clothes to take upstairs. When she came down, she had the folder of Prompto's whole life history. Prompto tried to tell her that parents in real life didn't need to torture their kids like they did in movies, but would she listen? Nope.

As they ate, she passed Ignis pictures and pamphlets and yellowing crayon drawings. Ignis glanced at Prompto for permission and in apology as each new treasure appeared. Prompto shrugged and said go for it; he didn't mind, not really. The show-and-tell was weird, but he was who he was, and that included the pages of blobs with ears all labeled _boG_. Plus, his dad was pumping him for information about Crownsguard training, and he one hundred percent didn't want him turning the focus of his interrogation on Ignis.

He wondered if Ignis noticed that while whole years of his teens were missing – for junior and high school, there were just snapshots from entrance and graduation ceremonies – they'd done family stuff when he was smaller, like anyone else (except maybe Ignis? He never talked about his childhood). Trips to the aquarium and the natural history museum, one of those "bring your kid to work" events where he got pictures taken with some of the massive cranes and diggers. Before he started elementary school, there were even a couple of blurry birthday party pics, with a cake and a present and him smiling so hard for the camera that his eyes squinted shut.

Down at the bottom of the folder, Ena started skipping over things. "You don't need to see his adoption papers or medical records," she said, and Prompto swallowed, thinking about the tattoo that he still kept bandaged and hidden under a wristband. He'd tell Ignis someday, but not like this. She found one last photo, dogeared, right at the bottom and her face suddenly went soft and fond. "Oh, wait, this one's..." She looked over at Prompto. "You should make a copy for yourself. It's the closest it gets to who we all are. It's not good," she added, but after a moment passed it to him and not to Ignis.

The first thing Prompto saw was the whiteboard propped on the table in front, with _Argentum, Ena, Tarrix, baby (parents unknown)_ written on it in blocky letters. The backdrop was shabby, the flash had been too strong, and... his parents looked young and dirty and scared, staring at the camera defiantly, wearing what were possibly the only clothes they owned. His dad held Prompto in one arm, tucked up against his chest. He looked sick, Prompto thought, with hardly any hair, his eyes and cheeks sunken, and painfully thin. He'd known the immigration office had decided he was probably around one or so, but he'd taken pictures of one-year-olds at the photography shop. They crawled and walked and smiled when he jiggled the squeaky Moogle toy at them.

Baby Prompto didn't look like he could do any of that. He didn't look strong enough to even cry.

"Shit," Prompto said. He didn't recognize himself at all.

"Your dad had been on the road a long time," Ena said. "It's not his fault." She looked at Ignis and sighed. "We were lucky."

Prompto had been, definitely; lucky to have been saved, lucky to be alive. To be given a name that meant no one was giving up on him. He passed the picture over to Ignis but didn't watch his reaction to it, grabbing his glass for a swig of water instead.

"Look at him now, though," Tarrix said, leaning over to punch Prompto in the arm. "He grew up okay. Never figured we'd see him in a Crown uniform fighting, but – "

"The wall will hold," Ena cut in. "That's all that matters."

"Can we talk about literally anything else that's not terrifying or humiliating, please?" Prompto begged. He knew he wasn't supposed to tell anyone about the trip down to Altissia, but he might not see his folks for what sounded like a long time. He didn't want to end up arguing in circles about politics yet again. "Like food, food is good, or the weather, or movies?"

His mother put her elbow on the table and set her chin on her fist, like a quiz show presenter about to ask the kind of question that eliminated people from the next round. "Or you could tell me where you two met and where you went on your first date. Who made the first move."

"How much that car in the driveway cost," Tarrix added, unhelpfully.

Ignis apparently shared in Prompto's horrified distress, because he put his fork down and asked, apparently in deep panicked earnestness, if they'd like to see the engine.

Which was how they all ended up outside, with Prompto holding a flashlight and getting bitten by mosquitoes while Ignis popped the hood up and his parents approved (and disapproved) of various engine parts and safety features. It was like being sucked into one of those horrible manipulative TV commercials where family rifts were cured by the purchase of a vehicle with all the latest features.

And then Ignis _handed over the keys_ and said Prompto's parents could take the car for a drive if they wished.

Watching the tail lights disappear around the corner, Prompto put his arm around Ignis' waist and leaned against him. "They're not all that bad. In small doses. Family, right?" When Ignis made a small whimpering noise, possibly of agreement, Prompto nodded. "Do you want to go in and make out, or do the dishes?"

Which was how he ended up in his bedroom with the door locked, efficiently stripped of his uniform and tossed on the bed. He hadn't been turned on at all until just a minute ago, and suddenly he was fully hard and Ignis was sucking him off like it was a competitive sport and he meant to get the gold medal. Prompto's thoughts all whited out as he twisted on the sheets, kept right on the knife-edge between wild with arousal and flinching with overstimulation. He came in record time, and Ignis got up, swiping his mouth clean with the back of his hand, and brought Prompto a change of clothes with a pointed glance at his phone. Prompto suspected he wasn't checking the time as much as he was using an app to watch his car move through the suburbs in real time.

"Your turn," Prompto said anyway, lying in a liquefied sprawl.

Ignis shook his head. "Later," he said.

Prompto sat up and tugged on his t-shirt. He didn't even need to be psychic to know what Ignis was itching to do. "Noct's got an oven, right?"

Ignis looked immediately guilty. Prompto needed to put on pants to deal with that, unfortunately. Being a mature, responsible adult sucked sometimes.

"You know you wanna," Prompto went on. "Go have your nerdy bake-off. I'll be here, chilling with the folks, thinking about all the things I want to do to you _later_."

"It'll be a few hours." Ignis still sounded dubious, but he turned to the wardrobe and quickly changed into casual (for him: everything was still ironed crisp) clothes himself.

Prompto got up and groped him around the waist before he could get his shirt tucked in all the way. Ignis grumbled, but it was more like a cat purring than a serious threat. Prompto let one hand slide down to check if Ignis was hard, which he was, just from getting Prompto off.

Prompto ruched his shirt up so he could tweak a nipple, while his other hand stayed curled around his dick, stroking so slowly that Ignis' hips jerked in frustration.

"There'll be time for that tonight," he repeated, though he sounded less certain now, with how rough his voice was. "Prompto. Parents."

Prompto was tempted to ignore him, but he could make out the distinctive sound of a car engine, turning into the driveway. "I guess," he said, pulling Ignis' shirt down and going up on his toes to kiss the back of his neck while Ignis tried to make himself presentable. "We should go downstairs or it'll look suspicious."

"I'm well aware," Ignis said, like his patience had worn thin.

Prompto grinned, and unlocked the door. "Don't worry, they like you."

Ena and Tarrix were a little concerned when Ignis took off, berries in hand, as soon as they returned his car keys. Prompto could see their emotions clashing: on the one hand, it wasn't done to upset a houseguest, but on the other, they were supposed to like sticking it to the aristocracy.

"He's kind of been on the outs with a friend," Prompto said. "He's going to try and make up with them."

"Hope it works, I guess." Ena shrugged, and took a pair of red oranges from the fruit bowl. "Cut those, I'm putting on tea."

She'd been using the same tea kettle all Prompto's life; even diligent scrubbing couldn't keep a shine on it, not after 20 years on a gas ring. Prompto saw her eye the shiny elegance of the coffee machine and figured no time like the present. He made sure he was the one to grab a knife and slice the fruit into wedges, though, and not his dad.

"So," he started, making his breathing slow down like he had to when he was shooting. "He's staying here. We have to go and do another training thing in a couple of weeks anyway," _that sounded innocuous, didn't it?_, "and his apartment is really depressing. I know I should have asked," he concluded, and took a deep breath. The air was rich with the sharp clean smell of citrus.

Tarrix made a scoffing noise. "It's your house, too. We figured you'd get a dog. Your ma was worried about fur getting everywhere."

Prompto realized, like a lightbulb going on, that his life would be totally complete if he had both Ignis and a dog. But... "I'm not home enough. It wouldn't be fair to leave a dog alone all day."

"Guess that's true," Tarrix said. His voice was flat, almost wary, and Prompto didn't get it for a moment.

And then he did. He grabbed a plate to arrange his orange slices on and thought, _yeah, it hadn't been fair that they'd left him alone so much as a kid. Couldn't have been helped. Still wasn't great._ But that was done and here he was now.

"So," he said, setting the oranges on the table and sitting down. "What's the news? Anything good?"

Ena handed Tarrix the teapot, coming around to join Prompto as their mugs were filled and distributed. "The Nifs are up to something. Same as always. They move in like this time they mean war, drop daemons on the farmland outside the wall, make a few holes, and then fuck right back off."

"They're trying to kill the King with magic," Tarrix said. "Everyone knows it. Force him to drain himself dry."

Prompto swallowed hard. Noct thought the same thing, but no one knew what to do about it. Apparently in the old days Lucian spies had infiltrated Niflheim's bases and sabotaged their weapons and research. Noct said, bitterly, that'd be a lot more useful than a handful of Glaives trying to hold daemons back with his father's magic.

He must have looked upset, because Ena kicked him under the table. "Hey, I wanted to hear about how you met that man of yours," she said. "Not too late to change the subject."

"That's emotional blackmail or something," he protested, and ate an orange slice while he tried to mentally edit his very private love life into a parent-friendly version. "Also, you can't tell anyone," and with that out of the way, he called up his courage and started, "So one day, he came to pick Noct up from school..."

Hours later, his story (heavily censored) was long over and they were staving off the habit of arguing with a TV drama that no one was invested in, which made it easy to poke fun at all the characters. His parents took the sofa and Prompto curled up on the carpet with the throw pillows, like he was a little kid again. Ena kept up an increasingly irritated commentary of wanting everyone to just grow a spine, and Prompto kind of agreed. If they'd only talked to each other about stuff instead of making stupid assumptions, then the story would have ended thirty minutes ago.

His phone dinged, and he dug it out of his pocket. He'd been hoping Ignis would say he was on his way back, but it was Noct sending a selfie of him biting into one of those tarts that Ignis kept making, and grinning with his berry-stained teeth. The caption read _THIS IS IT!!!!!!_ Ignis wasn't in the picture, which Prompto thought was too bad, but then another message arrived. This time Prompto got to see Ignis in all his proud glory, with flour streaked down one cheek and looking exhausted but still radiating competence as he held a tray laden with pastry.

_Your boyfriend,_ Noct added helpfully. _He keeps trying to be modest and say it's nothing, anyone could have reinvented the recipe totally from scratch, but I can tell he doesn't believe himself._

_It only took what, six years?_ Prompto rolled over so he was lying on his stomach, feet waving in the air. _You mad?_

Noct sent another picture of his face, out of focus, one finger pointing vaguely toward his nose. _Do I look mad?_ Prompto watched as the _Noct is typing_ line blinked, disappeared, blinked again. _I wish things were different. Less fucked up. On the one hand both of you lied to me for years. Not great. On the other, it always pissed me off that Ignis didn't do anything just for himself, like he was above all that, or maybe brainwashed. Superior to me, at any rate. He's cleaning up the kitchen btw and looks really nervous about what I'm telling you._

_Don't be a dick,_ Prompto sent back immediately. _Go help, he made all that cake for you._ He sent a line of emoji, sweets and smilies, and then added, _I'm sorry. For lying. Lmk what I can do to make it up to you._

_Screenshotted,_ Noct sent. _You're indebted now. Brb, potscrubbing._

He didn't pick up the conversation again, though. Prompto hoped he was talking more with Ignis. They probably had a lot to catch up on. He saved the pictures to his phone, noting idly that he had a stupid number of pictures of Ignis again. They kept building up. He had no idea how that happened.

The TV drama ended, but he had stopped paying attention when Noct wrote. He was playing Angry Moogles badly when his parents stepped over him on their way to bed, warning him not to ruin his eyes or stay up too late. He said _uh-huh_ and bowled over some marauding cactuars.

After a few minutes, he realized he could take over the sofa, so he dragged himself and his entourage of pillows up and settled in, the house quiet around him with the chatter from the TV gone. He was mostly asleep when he heard the purr of a car engine pulling up outside, and he barely had the coordination to sit up.

He heard Ignis unlock the door and then the telltale scuff of slippers.

"Welcome back," Prompto said when the kitchen door slid open. Ignis looked startled, as if he hadn't expected him to wait up. Well... more or less up, anyway. Up now, as he got to his feet and crossed the room. "I hear I owe you congratulations."

Ignis was carrying another fancy paper bag – from some shop that probably wouldn't let Prompto in the door – but from it he took out a plain box and set it on the counter. Prompto peeked inside. The tarts nested there smelled delicious, and Ignis tried and failed to look casual about his culinary victory.

"Noct sent those for breakfast tomorrow," Ignis said. "He wanted to thank your parents."

"Bribery," Prompto said knowingly. "Knowing how tasty these things usually are, it should work."

Ignis gave him a reprimanding look and took the box away, sliding it into the refrigerator and shutting the door firmly.

Prompto grinned. "Guess it's bedtime, then." He held out his hand to Ignis. "Come on, I have plans."

Ignis' fingers were warm and Prompto didn't even marvel much anymore at how small his own hand felt by comparison. They knew each other, that was the thing, and now suddenly other people knew, too, and... the world hadn't ended. Gladio approved. Noct was kind of okay with it. His parents treated Ignis like a houseguest, for the most part, and hopefully they could be distracted with food until they went away. He'd have to prep Ignis for how to evade conversations-slash-arguments about money and being an aristocrat and Insomnia's shit treatment of anyone outside the wall.

But right now, he was busy waving off Ignis' weak protest about how maybe they shouldn't _do anything_ with his parents sleeping just across the hall. "Sound carries," he said, and Prompto was disappointed he'd already turned the lights off and couldn't tell if Ignis was blushing. He sounded like he was, though.

"So you just need to keep quiet," he pointed out, very reasonably. "No problem." He gave Ignis' hand a squeeze. "You should trust me about these things."

"About _some_ things, I suppose," Ignis said, but his voice was warm.

"Definitely about when I should take you upstairs and what I'm going to do to you there." Prompto shrugged, and pulled to get Ignis moving, heading to the staircase.

Ignis followed.

*

Prompto'd hoped that his parents would sleep in until after he and Ignis left, but alas, no such luck. Ignis had the foresight to make coffee first thing, though, before rushing back upstairs to get dressed, and Prompto got to kiss him and tell him not to be nervous before stumbling down to the kitchen himself.

He was terrified of heating the pies up wrong, so he went to help Tarrix hang out the laundry instead.

"How long are you guys staying?" he asked, tossing a shirt over one pole and pulling it straight and wrinkle-free before pegging it. 

Tarrix grunted; he obviously needed his morning's first cup of coffee. "Should head back tomorrow. Dunno if we'll be able to get back before your training thing."

"It's cool," Prompto said. He felt a pang at the words. He didn't anticipate being homesick, which was kind of sad. If they had to stay with Noct in Altissia for a while – months, years maybe – he guessed he'd probably wonder what Ena and Tarrix were up to. They'd text and call like they did now, and they'd seem just as close as they always had been, i.e., not very. Leaving the only family and home he'd ever known should feel more tragic, or something.

But maybe he was being weird and overthinking. He did another shirt, and then saw Ignis moving around inside, preparing stuff.

"Breakfast," he said, gesturing, and Tarrix snorted.

"How'd my kid get a man like that waiting on him hand and foot?"

Prompto choked, caught between wanting to tell his dad to shut up and fuck off because he didn't know anything about Ignis or Prompto, either, and the terrible childish drive for approval, of imagining that if only he explained things right, Tarrix would stop saying things like that.

He could feel himself blushing; he bet he looked like someone'd dumped red paint on his head, and it'd gone all down his neck.

What he ended up saying was, "Did Ena's parents like you?" His voice sounded strangled, but there wasn't anything he could do about that.

Tarrix shrugged. "Didn't matter. Once she made up her mind, not even the Astrals could change it. My da hated her, though." He gave Prompto a slap between the shoulder blades that would have sent him stumbling if not for all that hand-to-hand combat practice he'd been doing. "We're proud of you. You're a good kid. Tough as nails."

Prompto had no idea what to say to that, his mouth opening and closing like a fish trying not to suffocate. Tarrix gave him another companionable slap and herded him indoors, telling him to go eat, like he was five years old.

Prompto didn't know what to do with that.

In the end, this visit from his parents was the nicest one in years. No major arguments, _amazing_ food which Ignis learned to make, and the number of embarrassing stories about him as a kid were kept to a minimum. They stayed three and a half days, which was a long time for them to be away from work; Prompto surreptitiously checked all the reports about recent assaults on the wall, which confirmed that even the Nifs were being nice.

That was ominous.

Ignis made sure Prompto got off work early so he could be home to see his parents off. When he said goodbye to Ena and Tarrix, they fell easily into the familiar rhythm of yelling back and forth at each other: _Did you get your socks?_ Prompto'd shout down the stairs. _Cause I'm looking at them in the basket right now._

_Do you have enough money?_ Ena called back, even though she could hear him running down, taking two steps at a time. _Rix, where's my badge?_

_Fucking hell_, Tarrix contributed to the cacophony, as if he never lost anything (he did, but mostly his temper).

Ignis found her badge on its tether under a bag of food they were taking back with them, homemade cookies and stuff. Ena thanked him and grabbed her bags, Tarrix gave Prompto and then Ignis in turn a companionable punch to the shoulder, and then they were out the door, where a transport was waiting for them in the last light of the setting sun.

Prompto was glad for the normalcy. If there'd been hugs and tears and declarations of love, he told Ignis, it'd have felt too final. Like they really wouldn't see each other again.

"This way, it's like they'll be coming home again in a month or two, and I'll be here," he said with a shrug. "It's going to be weird for them, stuck in an empty house for once. I saw you showed my dad how to use the coffee machine, by the way. Did you tell him how much it cost?"

"I've no idea of the price, as it was a present," Ignis said, with a desultory shrug. "From Gladio's father, actually, though I believe I left out mentioning that he's Shield to the King."

"Wise. Wouldn't want them thinking their tax dollars had in any way contributed to the over-caffeination of the rich."

Ignis gave him a stern look.

"And the boyfriends of the rich," Prompto added, stretching and heading into the kitchen to see if his parents had left any coffee after filling their flasks. There was just enough for two half-cups. Better than nothing, he supposed, grabbing two mugs. "So – does your family know you're leaving?"

Ignis trailed after him, as if he felt the need to supervise Prompto, to make sure he didn't accidentally dilute his drug of choice with milk or sugar. Like he would. "My uncle told me he hoped seeing Noct dutifully married would incentivize me to reconsider my own preferences."

Prompto very nearly choked on a mouthful of coffee. Well. That was horrible and insulting.

"I informed him I'd most certainly consider marriage if I found the right person," Ignis said, lacing the words with vindictive smugness. "He'd momentarily forgotten that same-sex marriage is legal in Altissia. He recalls now, however."

Prompto put his mug down entirely, because otherwise he was a danger to himself and everything around him.

A moment later, Ignis hastily set his down as well, realizing what he'd just said and looking like he needed to explain or make excuses.

"Chill," Prompto said. He didn't want to talk about stuff like that, for fear of getting jinxed. "_I'm only nineteen_, right? There's time." So long as Ignis didn't break up with him again. He tried not to think about that.

But Ignis didn't seem content to let the topic be swept away so easily, frowning a moment before saying, "Come with me." His voice made the statement into a question as he held out his hand, which Prompto took without hesitation. Ignis looked relieved – like what, Prompto was going to say no?

He wasn't stupid.

Ignis put music on as he drove them downtown, something quiet with pianos that Prompto was content to let fill in the gaps in conversation. Ignis was keeping their destination a secret, and Prompto didn't ask him more than two or three times; he was cool with being surprised. He occupied himself playing with Ignis' hair, his other hand resting on Ignis' thigh. He liked how he could feel him working the pedals, the way he controlled the car's speed. The way he tensed in warning when Prompto's fingers edged a bit too close to his dick. Prompto had no desire to get shoved away, though. He was behaving. Being good. For now.

"Here we are," Ignis said, and turned off the road into an underground parking lot. Prompto blinked and belatedly tried to get an idea of where they were. He thought they might be in the westside shopping district, near the department store where he got all his picture frames these days. Maybe Ignis was taking him out to dinner; he was hungry, he could eat.

But when they walked out to street level, Ignis turned into a small pedestrian arcade with a vaulted glass roof and shops three stories high on both sides. There were fancy baskets of flowering plants hanging from the streetlights, all very classy. Ignis looked like he belonged, but he was still holding Prompto's hand, as if he didn't notice or care how out of place Prompto was.

"Gladio buys his trousers here," Ignis said in explanation, leading Prompto up a spiral staircase and two doors down to – what else – an emporium of leather goods. The shop window had a display of elegant bags on pedestals and mannequins in leather minidresses, with jaunty studded caps on their bald heads.

Prompto walked into the shop when Ignis held the door open for him, but he was in a cloud of bafflement until Ignis said, with what Prompto recognized as false confidence, "I want to buy you something. A gift. Not in apology," he added. "But... a promise, I suppose. A symbol of commitment."

Prompto thought that sounded romantic, though he was glad they weren't in a jewelry store; that'd be way too much. "Huh... I'd like that," he said. "Or I think so? What kind of fashion statement do you want to commit me to?"

Ignis led him to the glass display cases off to the side, thankfully away from the trousers and skirts and coats. They were all gorgeous, but... over the top, not to mention hard to clean. What Ignis showed him were wristbands, and he immediately said, "I'm well aware how forward this is of me, and I will understand completely should none of these suit your needs for your injury."

"Scars," Prompto corrected him. He prickled with self-consciousness, half wanting to yank his hand back from Ignis so he could check and _make absolutely sure_ the tattoo wasn't visible. But also, he knew the cheap sweatbands he wore looked childish, and: "These are very much my aesthetic."

They'd go great with the Crownsguard fatigues he was having made up for the trip to Altissia, and he wondered if Ignis had sneaked a peek at the plans. Or maybe he just knew Prompto so well that he thought of him immediately when he saw something black and strappy, heavily studded, with a skull and crossbones buckle. Not an exact match for the buckle on the belt Ignis was wearing right now, but thematically close.

"I like that one," he said, pointing it out. Ignis' expression changed, so subtly a stranger might not even have noticed. But to Prompto the metamorphosis from nervous uncertainty to smug pleasure at having been right was blatant, and he gave Ignis' hand a squeeze. "Yeah, yeah, I'm predictable."

Ignis turned his head slightly, raising his chin just a notch, and somehow that was enough to make a salesclerk hurry over to them.

Prompto picked out three different wristbands to try on. The clerk didn't blink an eye at the bandage around his wrist, just carried on pointing out the features of each one in turn and asking Prompto if he had metal or any other allergies.

In the end he liked two of them enough that he asked Ignis to decide which he should get, and Ignis told the salesclerk they'd take both. "You have two wrists, after all," he said, as if that was only logical.

Prompto was tempted to mimic his dad and ask _But how much will that cost?_ except... he kind of didn't want to make a joke out of any of this. He wanted Ignis to acknowledge him; he wanted to be someone who couldn't be gotten rid of without a fight. So instead he pointed to the brass plaque that read _We do engraving!_ and asked if that was possible.

"Oh, certainly," the clerk said, and pulled a form out from under the counter for him to fill in.

He refused gift boxes and instead walked out into the evening chill feeling conspicuous with a new – doubtless expensive – band around each wrist.

"Hey," Prompto said, taking the stairs down two at a time, bubbling over with a giddy happiness that he didn't know what to do with. "I don't want to go home just yet. Can we go look at our stars again?"

"The view will be much clearer outside the wall," Ignis reminded him.

"I want _our stars_," Prompto insisted. "No offense to all the other ones." He caught Ignis' hand in his own and squeezed. Other couples had songs; Prompto and Ignis had constellations, and inside the band covering his tattoo his name and Ignis' were entangled with the stars of the autumn triangle as it rose over the back of Leviathan. Back in the shop, Ignis had said he didn't believe in fate, the superstition that natal stars revealed soulmates and fates. _But I believe we can write our own names there_, he'd said, and... so they had.

"You're ridiculous," Ignis said, but he sounded as if he found that endearing and not irritating. He gave a tug, pulling Prompto toward a bakery across the way. "At least let's buy some sandwiches to take with us." 

"You love me," Prompto said, warmed straight through.

"You know I do."

"I love you, too." Prompto wondered if Ignis could tell how he felt, every good feeling dialed up to maximum, safety and comfort and pleasure and warmth and care, all of that coursing through him like a drug. "Can I drive?"

Ignis snorted. "At night? I think not."

Prompto hadn't anticipated Ignis giving in that easily, and he shrugged. "I guess I'll have to entertain myself some other way." In the light spilling from the bakery's plate glass windows, Prompto could see Ignis' faint, fond smile, and a blush he was probably trying to will away. He popped up on his toes to kiss one of those red-stained cheeks, just because he could.

After a slight pause, Ignis said, "I look forward to it," his voice low with promise. He ducked to return the kiss quickly, and then held the door open for Prompto. Right. Sandwiches first, then stars, and then the rest of their days.

He was ready. Bring it on.


End file.
